Kim Jong Un Mocks U.S., Promising North Korean Nuclear Attack Soon

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects a sub-unit under KPA Unit 1344 in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang November 9, 2016.

Our Nation’s Best Defense System Must Remain In Place (News Analysis)

As Yellowhammer has reported in recent weeks, when North Korea attempts a nuclear attack on the United States, they will do so using an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Over the past year, they’ve launched scores of failed ICBM trial runs. Yesterday, however, as Americans celebrated our independence, North Korea pulled off its first ever successful ICBM test launch.

According to Fox News, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un called the test a “brilliant victory” adding that “gift packages” will be coming to the “American bastards” soon.

Notwithstanding Kim’s crazy antics, the threat is real. As national defense expert Loren Thompson wrote in Forbes:

Nuclear weapons are the worst military threat that America faces. A single 500-kiloton warhead exploded over a major U.S. city would destroy or heavily damage all buildings to a radius of three miles, and cause widespread fires to a radius of six miles. Electric grids and other fragile infrastructure would fail for tens of miles in every direction. If it was a big city like New York or L.A., prompt and delayed fatalities would likely exceed a million people. Radiation would render much of the damaged area uninhabitable for years.

At this point, no one seems to question whether or not Kim will attempt a nuclear attack on the U.S., but simply when he will do so. Yesterday’s actions no doubt energized the deeply disturbed dictator. In light of this growing threat, now is not the time to reorganize the country’s only defense system against such attacks, the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD).

The outgoing head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), Vice Adm. James Syring, moved to bring the GMD under the functional control of the U.S. government just before he lost his job in the Pentagon, and reportedly did so without consulting his replacement, Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves. Boeing is the prime contractor responsible for developing the GMD, and if carried out, Syring’s move would result in the loss of invaluable institutional knowledge at the program’s most critical stage of development. This action would no doubt destabilize this vital defense program—the only one we have against North Korea’s ICBMs.

Thankfully, Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers introduced legislation in his House Armed Services subcommittee that should slow this process down. At the end of the day, however, it remains to be seen whether or not the GMD will be “disaggregated” by the U.S. government. As Congressman Rogers noted in a previous article, doing so would be a mistake.

With the growing threats from North Korea and Iran, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has plenty on its plate. Our missile defense systems have suffered uner the ravages of the last eight years under the Obama Administration. Now is not the time to complicate our homeland defense by introducing unnecessary uncertainty and disrupting the management of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program.

Loren Thompson agrees, as he stated in a subsequent Forbes article:

Rather than having one team manage the whole GMD effort, there would be different groups working various pieces of the missile-defense puzzle. The Missile Defense Agency itself would become the “system integrator” for the overall effort.This is a really bad idea, left over from the Obama years when policymakers thought that bureaucrats were better at managing tech projects than people from the private sector. Nobody has said Boeing is doing a bad job, the agency just wants more control over the program’s technical baseline and day-to-day management. It sounds reasonable, but past experience with other such initiatives suggests it won’t work.

In light of yesterday’s successful test by the North Koreans, breaking up the GMD now seems even more harmful—especially if the rationale is cost savings. While most everyone appreciates the need to cut spending by the federal government, Thompson cogently expressed why doing so is terrible for our national security:

We are talking here about the only program the government funds that could stop a North Korean warhead from reaching Los Angeles or Houston or New York. Ground-based Midcourse Defense should have gotten more robust funding than it did during the Obama years — the administration eventually woke up to the threat — but the May 30 test demonstrates the program is achieving its goals despite the shoestring budget. So where’s the case for reorganizing how it is managed?

The new head of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves of the Air Force, needs to rethink his contracting strategy for the future. At the very least, he needs to advance a clear explanation as to why the change of course is necessary before a new administration has even stated what his agency’s priorities will be. The more you look at other efforts the federal government has undertaken to be a system integrator, the more you will wonder how this dubious plan ever got launched in the first place.

In addition to all of the compelling reasons for leaving the GMD alone, Thompson also points out (to flip the phrase) that the best offense is a good defense:

Although Washington is poised to spend over $600 billion on defense during the fiscal year beginning October 1, not much of that money is allocated to protecting the American homeland from intercontinental missiles launched by Russia or other hostile nuclear powers. About one-fourth of one-percent, to be precise. Instead, policymakers have chosen a strategy of deterrence to defend the homeland, meaning that any nuclear attacker would be met with overwhelmingly destructive retaliation. The assumption is that no rational leader will launch nuclear weapons if he or she knows it would be tantamount to committing national suicide. Unfortunately, not all leaders are rational. And some are accident-prone. Sometimes even rational people can’t think clearly during a crisis.

In the case of Kim Jong Un, everyone knows he’s anything but rational. Therefore, it’s our hope that the completion of the GMD’s development will be left to the 336 capable men and women at Boeing, and the hundreds of subcontractors who support them, right here in Alabama. We also hope the administration will make GMD funding a top priority so that we may destroy ICMB’s aimed at our shores. After yesterday’s North Korean test, we need the GMD now more than ever.

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