U.S. sends in $900M anti-missile radar array as North Korea vows to fire up nuclear reactor
National Post Staff and Associated Press | 13/04/02 | Last Updated: 13/04/02 3:09 PM ET
AFP PHOTO/HANDOUT / US NAVY / MC3 Declan Barnes =This
March 17, 2013 US Navy handout image shows the Arleigh Burke-class
guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG 56)(Front), the
Republic of Korea Navy Aegis-class destroyer ROKS Seoae-Yu-Seong-Ryong
(DDG 993), (C) and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS
McCampbell (DDG 85) moving into formation in the waters off the Korean
Peninsula during exercise Foal Eagle 2013.
As the rhetoric surrounding North Korea heats up, the United States
has dispatched two key pieces of anti-missile hardware to the Korean
peninsula.
The U.S. is sending in the USS John S. McCain, a guided-missile destroyer, to operate off the southwest coast of the Korean peninsula, a defence official who requested anonymity said on Monday. Meanwhile, a sea-based radar platform known as SBX has also been mobilized for what the official described as routine operations.
The moves aren’t related to the military exercises under way in the region, the official said by e-mail.
The SBX and the John S. McCain’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System are both specifically designed to locate and shoot down incoming ballistic missiles using methods similar to ones used by the Iron Dome system used in Israel.
It would be used to shoot down long-range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles before they could boost into the upper atmosphere.
The SBX is a radar array mounted on a drilling rig and is a more advanced version of the same system, offering more accurate targeting data than the McCain, though it lacks the warships self defences.
The radar system cost almost $900-million and is ostensibly based out of Alaska, though the installation, with a crew of 75, has never actually gone to port there.
These moves came just before North Korea vowed Tuesday to restart a nuclear reactor that can make one bomb’s worth of plutonium a year, escalating tensions already raised by near daily warlike threats against the United States and South Korea.
The North’s plutonium reactor was shut down in 2007 as part of international nuclear disarmament talks that have since stalled. The declaration of a resumption of plutonium production — the most common fuel in nuclear weapons — and other facilities at the main Nyongbyon nuclear complex will boost fears in Washington and among its allies about North Korea’s timetable for building a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach the United States, technology it is not currently believed to have.
A spokesman for the North’s General Department of Atomic Energy said that scientists will begin work at a uranium enrichment plant and a graphite-moderated 5 megawatt reactor, which generates spent fuel rods laced with plutonium and is the core of the Nyongbyon nuclear complex.
The unidentified spokesman said the measure is part of efforts to resolve the country’s acute electricity shortage but also for “bolstering up the nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity,” according to a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test in February, prompting a new round of UN sanctions that have infuriated its leaders and led to a torrent of threatening rhetoric.
The United States has sent nuclear-capable bombers and stealth jets to participate in annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that the allies call routine but that Pyongyang claims are invasion preparations.
North Korea has declared that the armistice ending the Korean War in 1953 is void, threatened to launch nuclear and rocket strikes on the United States and, most recently, declared at a high-level government assembly that making nuclear arms and a stronger economy are the nation’s top priorities.
The threats are seen as efforts to force policy changes in Seoul and Washington and increase domestic loyalty to young North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by portraying him as a powerful military force.
“North Korea is keeping tension and crisis alive to raise stakes ahead of possible future talks with the United States,” said Hwang Jihwan, a North Korea expert at the University of Seoul. “North Korea is asking the world, ‘What are you going to do about this?’”
North Korea added the 5-megawatt, graphite-moderated reactor to its nuclear complex at Nyongbyon in 1986 after seven years of construction. The country began building a 50-megawatt and a 200 megawatt reactor in 1984, but construction was suspended under a 1994 nuclear deal with Washington.
North Korea says the facility is aimed at generating electricity. It takes about 8,000 fuel rods to run the reactor. Reprocessing the spent fuel rods after a year of reactor operation could yield about 7 kilograms of plutonium – enough to make at least one nuclear bomb, experts say.
Nuclear bombs can be produced with highly enriched uranium or with plutonium. North Korea is believed to have exploded plutonium devices in its first two nuclear tests, in 2006 and 2009.
In 2010, the North unveiled a long-suspected uranium enrichment
program, which would give it another potential route to make bomb fuel.
Uranium worries outsiders because the technology needed to make highly
enriched uranium bombs is much easier to hide than huge plutonium
facilities.
But experts say plutonium is considered better for building small warheads, which North Korea needs if it is going to put them on missiles. Analysts say they don’t believe North Korea currently has mastered such miniaturization technology.
Scientist and nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker has estimated that Pyongyang has 24 to 42 kilograms of plutonium – enough for perhaps four to eight rudimentary bombs similar to the plutonium weapon used on Nagasaki in World War II.
It’s not known whether the North’s latest atomic test, in February, used highly enriched uranium or plutonium stockpiles. South Korea and other countries have so far failed to detect radioactive elements that may have leaked from the test and which could determine what kind of device was used.
“North Korea is dispelling any remaining uncertainties about its intention for developing nuclear arms. It is making it clear that its nuclear arms program is the essence of its national security and that it’s not negotiable,” said Sohn Yong-woo, a professor at the Graduate School of National Defense Strategy of Hannam University in South Korea.
“North Korea is more confident about itself than ever after the third nuclear test,” Sohn said. “That confidence is driving the leadership toward more aggressive nuclear development.”
With files from, Hyung-Jin Kim And Foster Klug, Associated Press, Bloomberg and National Post Staff
The U.S. is sending in the USS John S. McCain, a guided-missile destroyer, to operate off the southwest coast of the Korean peninsula, a defence official who requested anonymity said on Monday. Meanwhile, a sea-based radar platform known as SBX has also been mobilized for what the official described as routine operations.
The moves aren’t related to the military exercises under way in the region, the official said by e-mail.
The SBX and the John S. McCain’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System are both specifically designed to locate and shoot down incoming ballistic missiles using methods similar to ones used by the Iron Dome system used in Israel.
It would be used to shoot down long-range Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles before they could boost into the upper atmosphere.
The SBX is a radar array mounted on a drilling rig and is a more advanced version of the same system, offering more accurate targeting data than the McCain, though it lacks the warships self defences.
The radar system cost almost $900-million and is ostensibly based out of Alaska, though the installation, with a crew of 75, has never actually gone to port there.
These moves came just before North Korea vowed Tuesday to restart a nuclear reactor that can make one bomb’s worth of plutonium a year, escalating tensions already raised by near daily warlike threats against the United States and South Korea.
The North’s plutonium reactor was shut down in 2007 as part of international nuclear disarmament talks that have since stalled. The declaration of a resumption of plutonium production — the most common fuel in nuclear weapons — and other facilities at the main Nyongbyon nuclear complex will boost fears in Washington and among its allies about North Korea’s timetable for building a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach the United States, technology it is not currently believed to have.
A spokesman for the North’s General Department of Atomic Energy said that scientists will begin work at a uranium enrichment plant and a graphite-moderated 5 megawatt reactor, which generates spent fuel rods laced with plutonium and is the core of the Nyongbyon nuclear complex.
The unidentified spokesman said the measure is part of efforts to resolve the country’s acute electricity shortage but also for “bolstering up the nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity,” according to a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test in February, prompting a new round of UN sanctions that have infuriated its leaders and led to a torrent of threatening rhetoric.
The United States has sent nuclear-capable bombers and stealth jets to participate in annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that the allies call routine but that Pyongyang claims are invasion preparations.
North Korea has declared that the armistice ending the Korean War in 1953 is void, threatened to launch nuclear and rocket strikes on the United States and, most recently, declared at a high-level government assembly that making nuclear arms and a stronger economy are the nation’s top priorities.
U.S. Navy photo by Journalist 2nd Class Ryan C. McGinley/Public Domain The
Sea Based X-Band Radar (SBX) enters Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 2006
aboard the heavy lift vessel MV Blue Marlin after completing a
15,000-mile journey from Corpus Christi, Texas. SBX is a combination of
the world’s largest phased-array X-band radar carried aboard a mobile,
ocean-going semi-submersible oil platform.
The threats are seen as efforts to force policy changes in Seoul and Washington and increase domestic loyalty to young North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by portraying him as a powerful military force.
“North Korea is keeping tension and crisis alive to raise stakes ahead of possible future talks with the United States,” said Hwang Jihwan, a North Korea expert at the University of Seoul. “North Korea is asking the world, ‘What are you going to do about this?’”
North Korea added the 5-megawatt, graphite-moderated reactor to its nuclear complex at Nyongbyon in 1986 after seven years of construction. The country began building a 50-megawatt and a 200 megawatt reactor in 1984, but construction was suspended under a 1994 nuclear deal with Washington.
North Korea says the facility is aimed at generating electricity. It takes about 8,000 fuel rods to run the reactor. Reprocessing the spent fuel rods after a year of reactor operation could yield about 7 kilograms of plutonium – enough to make at least one nuclear bomb, experts say.
Nuclear bombs can be produced with highly enriched uranium or with plutonium. North Korea is believed to have exploded plutonium devices in its first two nuclear tests, in 2006 and 2009.
Click to enlarge
But experts say plutonium is considered better for building small warheads, which North Korea needs if it is going to put them on missiles. Analysts say they don’t believe North Korea currently has mastered such miniaturization technology.
Scientist and nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker has estimated that Pyongyang has 24 to 42 kilograms of plutonium – enough for perhaps four to eight rudimentary bombs similar to the plutonium weapon used on Nagasaki in World War II.
It’s not known whether the North’s latest atomic test, in February, used highly enriched uranium or plutonium stockpiles. South Korea and other countries have so far failed to detect radioactive elements that may have leaked from the test and which could determine what kind of device was used.
“North Korea is dispelling any remaining uncertainties about its intention for developing nuclear arms. It is making it clear that its nuclear arms program is the essence of its national security and that it’s not negotiable,” said Sohn Yong-woo, a professor at the Graduate School of National Defense Strategy of Hannam University in South Korea.
“North Korea is more confident about itself than ever after the third nuclear test,” Sohn said. “That confidence is driving the leadership toward more aggressive nuclear development.”
AP Photo/KCNA via KNS In
this Sunday, March 31, 2013 photo released by the Korean Central News
Agency (KCNA) and distributed in Tokyo Monday, April 1, 2013 by the
Korea News Service,
Labels: Canada/US Relations, North Korea, Nuclear Technology, Security, Social Failures, United States, Unites States
posted by Pieface | 1:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home