North Korea is not assessed
to be able to miniaturize a nuclear weapon to fit on a long-range rocket – at
least not yet – even though it has an active nuclear weapons development
program.
The concern over North
Korea’s potential to develop the capability to launch an EMP attack is due to
the country’s instability and isolation and the defiance it has shown – even to
close friends China and Russia. Beijing and Moscow have been unable to influence
the behavior of North Korea’s leaders.
China already has expressed
concern with North Korean officials over the launch, and the United Nations
Security Council, on which China is a permanent member, already has condemned
it.
After the North’s failed
launch last April, the Security Council demanded that Pyongyang stop further
launch attempts using what amounts to ballistic missile technology. North Korea
has been a member of the U.N. since 1991.
Sources say that North
Korea is steeped in symbolism, and the launch was to coincide with the one-year
anniversary of the death of dictator Kim Jung Il, father of the current leader,
28-year-old Kim Jung Un. It also comes before the South Korean presidential
election on Dec. 19 and Japan’s next general election scheduled for Dec. 16 to
elect members of its parliament, or Diet.
The missile launched, the
Unha-3, is a three-stage Taepodong-2 missile.
Its technology is a little
better than North Korea’s nuclear weapons development, since the country is
actually an exporter of missile technology to nations such as Iran, Syria, Libya
and Egypt.
The success of the launch
of its Taepodong-2 also may help bolster the potential for future missile sales.
Informed sources say that representatives from the four Middle East countries
were on hand for the latest rocket launch.
While the North Koreans
said that the launch was to put a satellite into orbit, Western experts agree
that the same technological know-how provides the capability to send a warhead
as far as the United States.
With the knowledge of
orbiting capability, experts say, such a power projection could could give North
Korea the ability to reach even beyond California. An orbiting warhead could be
placed anywhere and released on command to de-orbit and hit any location within
the U.S.
Or, North Korea could
explode an orbiting warhead in the atmosphere some 150 miles above a target,
creating an electromagnetic pulse that could knock out the highly vulnerable
grid system of the U.S.
Experts agree that such an
EMP exploding high above Kansas, for example, would knock out a majority of
America’s national grid system.
This scenario, which isn’t
too far-fetched given the latest technical demonstration, recently was depicted
in the popular movie “Red Dawn,” in which the North Koreans use an EMP to knock
out the U.S. electrical grid system in the Northwest.
In the movie, the North
Koreans knock out all electricity as well as all command and control and
communications and the ability to detect such a threat.
With the help of the
Russians, as shown in the movie, the North Koreans are able to stage a land
invasion on the U.S.
For years, U.S. experts
have expressed concern about the catastrophic impact of an EMP event either from
a nuclear attack or a massive solar storm, as revealed in the comprehensive 2008
congressional report by the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States
from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. The EMP commission pointed
out:
The electromagnetic pulse
generated by a high altitude nuclear explosion is one of a small number of
threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic
consequences.
The increasingly pervasive
use of electronics of all forms represents the greatest source of vulnerability
to attack by EMP. Electronics are used to control, communicate, compute, store,
manage, and implement nearly every aspect of United States (U.S.) civilian
systems. When a nuclear explosion occurs at high altitude, the EMP signal it
produces will cover the wide geographic region within the line of sight of the
detonation.
This broad band, high
amplitude EMP, when coupled into sensitive electronics, has the capability to
produce widespread and long lasting disruption and damage to the critical
infrastructures that underpin the fabric of U.S.
society.
Because of the ubiquitous
dependence of U.S. society on the electrical power system its vulnerability to
an EMP attack, coupled with the EMP’s particular damage mechanisms, creates the
possibility of long-term, catastrophic consequences. The implicit invitation to
take advantage of this vulnerability, when coupled with increasing proliferation
of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, is a serious concern. A single
EMP attack may seriously degrade or shut down a large part of the electric power
grid in the geographic area of EMP exposure effectively instantaneously. There
is also a possibility of functional collapse of grids beyond the exposed area,
as electrical effects propagate from one region to
another.
The launch is giving the
North Koreans the ability to glean valuable information about launching an EMP
to wreak havoc on the U.S. national grid system.
It also represents a
serious U.S. intelligence failure of North Korean capabilities, according to
informed sources. The failure comes in the surprise that such a launch had
occurred, according to sources.
U.S. satellites had
detected the possibility of a launch, but at one point the North Koreans stood
down from launch preparations, claiming technical problems. But they had
concealed last-minute launch preparations in what sources say was probably a
serious North Korean deception and disinformation
effort.
For years, it has been
known to the U.S. intelligence community that the North Koreans are experts in
the art of deception and concealment.
Experts believe that in
addition to a new military capability, the launch was designed to give the North
Koreans greater influence in diplomatic talks and to obtain more humanitarian
assistance.
In a country in which vast
numbers of the population are starving, the government has devoted its limited
resources to ambitious missile and nuclear weapons programs. The effort gives
the leadership greater leverage in future international discussions along with
its symbolic value.
Officials also see the
launch as a means for Kim Jong Un to consolidate his own power grip and display
North Korea’s military capabilities.
North Korea today has a
million troops opposite across the Demilitarized Zone, which isn’t far from
South Korea’s capital of Seoul. There are some 34,000 U.S. troops sandwiched
between the South Korean capital and the DMZ.
F. Michael Maloof, senior
staff writer for the WND/ G2Bulletin, is a former security policy analyst in the
Office of the Secretary of Defense. He can be contacted at mmaloof@wnd.com.
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