North Korea's latest missile launch over Japan set
sirens blaring and triggered alerts telling people to seek shelter --
yet neither Tokyo nor Washington tried to shoot the rocket down.
The test follows one in August that saw another
rocket soar over Hokkaido. In that case too, much-vaunted Japanese and
US missile-intercept capabilities were not used.
Now some in the United States are wondering why all
this sophisticated weaponry isn't being used, especially as North Korean
leader Kim Jong-Un accelerates toward his goal of building a nuclear
missile capable of striking the United States.
"The next time the North Koreans launch a rocket,
especially one that will traverse over our ally Japan, I would hope that
we shoot it down as a message to the North Koreans and to other people,
like in Japan, who are counting on us," Republican Congressman Dana
Rohrabacher told lawmakers this week.
"Unless we demonstrate we're willing to use force, there's no reason for them to believe we will."
The US Pacific Command confirmed Friday's rocket was
an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), and Seoul's defense
ministry said it probably traveled around 3,700 kilometers (2,300
miles), hurtling to a maximum altitude of 770 kilometers.
The missile, which fell in the Pacific Ocean, represented North Korea's furthest-ever flight.
Evans Revere and Jonathan Pollack of the Brookings
Institution wrote in a paper that Washington should declare that any
future North Korean missiles toward or over US or allied territory would
be deemed a direct threat that would "be addressed with the full range
of US and allied defensive capabilities."
- Why no shoot down -
The United States and Japan together claim they can
shoot incoming missiles, but officials say Friday's siren-sounding
launch didn't meet that threshold.
If the US and its allies "would have determined that
it was a direct threat, we would have shot it down," said Pentagon
spokesman Colonel Rob Manning, noting the military's "deep arsenal of
capabilities."
For Japan, these include advanced Patriot batteries,
which can stop lower altitude missiles, and SM-3 missiles it is
developing with the US that can take out high-flying short- to
intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
The technology is imperfect but the Pentagon has demonstrated it can hit ICBM and intermediate-range missile targets.
Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the
Heritage Foundation, noted that when North Korea flies a missile over
Japan, it travels higher than the capabilities of any ballistic
missile-defense system stationed nearby, including the SM-3.
Also, Japan is a pacifist country constitutionally limited to taking military action only in self defense.
Hideshi Takesada, a North Korea and defense
expert who is a professor at Takushoku University in Tokyo, told AFP
that Japan plans to intercept a missile only when it enters its
territorial air or objects fall onto Japanese territory.
Recent missiles have flown far above Japan and nothing fell to the ground.
"Therefore, the government did not issue a destruction order," Takesada said.
While Japan has decent anti-missile technology, it's difficult to cover the entire Japanese archipelago, experts noted.
"Also, it's technically hard to judge if a
missile flying in an early stage can actually be a direct threat to the
Japanese territory," Akira Kato, an international politics professor at
J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, told AFP.
Japan and the United States do not want to
risk trying an intercept unless it is posing a certain threat. A failed
attempt could cause wide alarm and tip off Kim about any limitations.
"A potential failure in intercepting a
missile could only result in giving an unnecessary impression that
Japan's capability of missile defense is insufficient," Kato said.
Japan also has a network of Aegis
missile-defense destroyers, and President Donald Trump wants Tokyo and
South Korea to increase buys of such US gear. In Japan's case, that
could include the purchase of a land-based version of Aegis.
- Boost phase -
According to the New York Times, the US saw Friday's missile being fueled up a day earlier.
Current US missile-defense technologies focus
on stopping a North Korean missile when it is in mid-flight or during
the "terminal" stage of its ballistic arc as it plummets towards its
target.
But the Pentagon also wants to develop
technologies to take out missiles the moment they leave the launch pad,
when they are in their so-called "boost phase."
The missiles at that point are laden with
explosive fuel and traveling more slowly, so are more vulnerable and
could be taken out with another missile launched from nearby.
The US military is also exploring launching
cyber attacks and even the possibility of mounting lasers on drones,
making them capable of shooting down ballistic missiles shortly after
launch.
By Thomas Watkins with Shingo Ito in Tokyo,AFP News
11 hour
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