N. Korean ICBM test highlights need for missile defense

WASHINGTON, April 6 (UPI) -- North Korea's failed Taepodong-2 ICBM test Sunday highlighted the need for ballistic missile defense systems to defend against such threats -- just as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates prepares to make more cuts in the U.S. ballistic missile defense budget.

Gates was scheduled to announce plans Monday to rein in annual U.S. defense spending, which has soared from an already colossal $365 billion eight years ago to more than $654 billion in the current fiscal year. Gates certainly doesn't want to kill the U.S. BMD program, but he is under intense political and fiscal pressure to cut costs and rein it in.

Some targets for Gates in the field of BMD defense spending appear obvious. Israel may lose U.S. funding for its ambitious Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile interceptor, but the United States may instead sell Israel its already operational Standard Missile-3, which has a far superior performance to what the Israelis wanted from their Arrow-3 anyway. Boeing may take a hit for its long-delayed and much criticized Airborne Laser program, even though the company has been eager to publicize progress on it.

Funding for the two U.S. ballistic missile bases to deploy 10 Ground-based Midcourse Interceptors in Poland and a radar tracking array for them in the Czech Republic has already been targeted by Democrats in Congress who slashed funding for the bases by up to a third last year.

The Czech government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who wanted to build the radar base, was toppled by a no-confidence vote nearly two weeks ago. The Social Democrats and Communists, two parties that strongly oppose letting the United States build the radar base, will form the next government. And U.S. President Barack Obama, during his election campaign last year, clearly expressed his skepticism about the BMD European deployment, even though it is the only possible defense the United States could have in the foreseeable future against the threat of Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads fired against any city on the Eastern Seaboard.

The Iranian threat is certainly real. Iran continues to push ahead with top priority on its enormous gas centrifuge program to separate nuclear-weapons-grade uranium-235 from uranium-238. And in February Iran put its first communications satellite into orbit. Unlike North Korea's attempted launch Sunday, the Iranian one proved to be a complete success.

As we have repeatedly pointed out in these columns, any nation that has the capability to launch a satellite into orbit around the world at 18,000 miles per hour also has the capability to send a nuclear-armed ICBM halfway round the world in half an hour or so to obliterate any city it chooses.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency's GBI program is still a long way from being a fully mature, reliable technology. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report published March 13 pointed out cost overruns, delays in the program and the importance of putting it through far more testing than it has received so far. The report, GAO-09-338, is titled "Production and Fielding of Missile Defense Components Continue with Less Testing and Validation than Planned."

However, GBIs have already successfully shot down target ICBMs in tests, and they are the only defense America's cities could have against any ICBM threat from either North Korea or Iran for years to come.

North Korea and Iran already are close allies. Both of them cooperated in trying to help Syria build a nuclear development complex that the Israeli air force destroyed last year. But by timing its attempted ICBM launch Sunday, the day before Gates was scheduled to unveil his new spending-cut plans, Pyongyang may have played into the hands of the defenders of the U.S. ballistic missile defense program.

For although Sunday's test failed, it served notice that North Korea remains determined to develop its own ICBM capability. And to defend U.S. and other North American cities against that, pushing ahead with the Boeing-led GBI program remains the only game in town.

Also, the North Koreans can claim some legitimate progress from Sunday's test. Their ICBM flew nearly 2,000 miles before crashing -- about twice as far as any of their previous launches. It appears inevitable that they will achieve their goal in the end.

All efforts by previous U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democratic, to rein in the North Korean nuclear and ICBM programs have totally failed, whether they be constructive, friendly diplomacy or angry rhetoric supposedly backed by economic sanctions.

Sometimes the best -- indeed only -- form of defense is defense. That is the argument that the defenders of the GBIs and Airborne Lasers will be making in the Washington debate over which defense programs to ax or cut back and which to save this week.