http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific...y-turning-up-the-heat-on-north-korea-1.396166
STARS AND STRIPES
International community turning up the heat on North Korea
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula could be stoked even higher with the U.N. Security Council finalizing new sanctions against the rogue nation, the U.S. test-firing an ICBM missile in a show of force, and the American and South Korean militaries preparing for their largest-ever military exercises.
But North Korea has shown no signs of backing down, with leader Kim Jong Un recently appointing hardliners to key national security positions ahead of the first ruling Workers’ Party congress in more than two decades in May.
Also, the North’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, on Thursday called the upcoming U.S.-South Korean Key Resolve exercise tantamount to a “declaration of war” and threatened to turn South Korea, the U.S. and U.S. bases in the Pacific into a “sea of fire.”
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., described the U.S.-proposed sanctions as the toughest in 20 years, and they’re clearly aimed at hitting the North in two crucial areas: its already-weak economy and its military.
“These sanctions, if adopted, would send an unambiguous and unyielding message to the DPRK regime,” Power said Thursday. “The world will not accept your proliferation. There will be consequences for your actions.”
A draft of the sanctions, which are expected to be nailed down in the coming days with key support from North Korea’s closest ally, China, include cutting off imports of aviation and rocket fuel — which could ground the country’s airline and hamper military flights and rocket launches — and exports of mineral resources that have provided Pyongyang with hard currency.
The sanctions also call for mandatory inspections of all North Korean cargo entering or leaving a country. An arms embargo would be widened to include small arms.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula could be stoked even higher with the U.N. Security Council finalizing new sanctions against the rogue nation, the U.S. test-firing an ICBM missile in a show of force, and the American and South Korean militaries preparing for their largest-ever military exercises.
But North Korea has shown no signs of backing down, with leader Kim Jong Un recently appointing hardliners to key national security positions ahead of the first ruling Workers’ Party congress in more than two decades in May.
Also, the North’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, on Thursday called the upcoming U.S.-South Korean Key Resolve exercise tantamount to a “declaration of war” and threatened to turn South Korea, the U.S. and U.S. bases in the Pacific into a “sea of fire.”
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., described the U.S.-proposed sanctions as the toughest in 20 years, and they’re clearly aimed at hitting the North in two crucial areas: its already-weak economy and its military.
“These sanctions, if adopted, would send an unambiguous and unyielding message to the DPRK regime,” Power said Thursday. “The world will not accept your proliferation. There will be consequences for your actions.”
A draft of the sanctions, which are expected to be nailed down in the coming days with key support from North Korea’s closest ally, China, include cutting off imports of aviation and rocket fuel — which could ground the country’s airline and hamper military flights and rocket launches — and exports of mineral resources that have provided Pyongyang with hard currency.
The sanctions also call for mandatory inspections of all North Korean cargo entering or leaving a country. An arms embargo would be widened to include small arms.
Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel flew to Seoul on Friday and goes to Beijing on Saturday to discuss implementation of the U.N. sanctions.
“This is a very important time to put our heads together and think about the way forward,” Russel told reporters on arrival in South Korea.
It is key for China to be on board with imposing sanctions, which have proven ineffective in the past. And it will be even more critical for Beijing to enforce them, given its concerns that too much pressure could lead to a sudden collapse of Kim’s regime, spawning a flood of refugees and the possible rise of a pro-West government on China’s border.
But China’s patience with its neighbor has clearly been fraying, and even while calling for negotiations with the North, it has agreed that it must be punished for its recent provocations. Still there are concerns over who would really pay the price for sanctions: when China did tighten its supply pipeline, an estimated 2.5 million North Koreans starved in 1994-96.
The current crisis on the peninsula began with North Korea’s fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6, followed a month later by a rocket launch that was widely seen as a test of ballistic missile technology that would allow Pyongyang to reach the continental U.S. with a nuclear warhead.
While most experts believe the North still has more work ahead to achieve that capability, particularly with any reliability, it has shown resolve in pushing ahead, no matter what the costs, calling the nuclear program its self-defense insurance against efforts to destabilize its government.
The U.S. has made several shows of force in recent weeks, sending a B-52 bomber on a low-level flyover of South Korea from Guam, then dispatching four F-22 fighters there from Okinawa. In the latest move, it launched an unarmed Minuteman III missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California late Thursday to show the effectiveness of U.S. intercontinental capabilities.
“We and the Russians and the Chinese routinely do test shots to prove that the operational missiles that we have are reliable,” Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work told reporters. “And that is a signal ... that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons in defense of our country if necessary.”
38 North, a website run by Johns Hopkins University that monitors North Korea, carried a report Thursday in which analyst Michael Madden wrote about the recent high-level appointments of three hardliners “who support a more belligerent policy toward the ROK (South Korea), the United States and Japan, and who generally do not favor North-South engagement.”
“Pyongyang watchers should expect the coming months to resemble the tense geostrategic environment last seen during the spring of 2013, after the North’s third nuclear test, when Pyongyang declared a national emergency, mobilized its military and declared that the safety of foreign citizens in the two Koreas could not be guaranteed,” analyst Michael Madden wrote.
alexander.paul@stripes.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------r
http://www.straitstimes.com/world/north-korea-faces-toughest-un-sanctions-in-over-two-decades
NORTH KOREA FACES TOUGHEST UN SANCTIONS IN OVER TWO DECADES
UNITED NATIONS • The United States has presented a draft United Nations Security Council resolution it negotiated with China that would dramatically tighten existing restrictions on North Korea after its Jan 6 nuclear test and create the toughest UN sanctions regime in more than two decades.
This was as the US military test-fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile in a week late on Thursday to demonstrate the reliability of American nuclear weapons at a time of rising strategic tensions with countries such as Russia and North Korea.
The unarmed Minuteman III missile blasted off from a silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California shortly before midnight, headed towards a target area near Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, in the South Pacific.
Deputy Defence Secretary Robert Work said the tests, conducted at least 15 times since January 2011, send a message to strategic competitors such as Russia, China and North Korea that Washington has an effective nuclear arsenal.
The draft resolution, presented the same day the missile test took place, would require UN member states to conduct mandatory inspections of all cargo passing through their territory to or from North Korea to look for illicit goods. Previously, they were required to do so only if they had reasonable grounds to believe there was illicit cargo.
Diplomats said that the US used the nearly two months of bilateral negotiations that at one point involved President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart to win China's support for unusually tough measures intended to persuade its ally North Korea to abandon its atomic weapons programme.
The proposal would close a gap in the UN arms embargo on Pyongyang by banning all weapons imports and exports. There would also be an unprecedented ban on the transfer to North Korea of any item that could directly contribute to the operational capabilities of the North Korean armed forces, such as trucks that could be modified for military purposes.
Other proposed measures include a ban on all supplies of aviation and rocket fuel to North Korea, a requirement for states to expel North Korean diplomats engaging in illicit activities, and blacklisting 17 North Korean individuals and 12 entities, including the National Aerospace Development Agency, the body responsible for a rocket launch earlier this month.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told reporters that the new measures, if approved, would be "the strongest set of sanctions imposed by the Security Council in more than two decades". She said they were aimed at the North's leadership, and "careful not to punish the North Korean people".
Several council diplomats predicted a meeting today to adopt the draft, but Russia's deputy UN envoy Petr Iliichev said Moscow needed time to study it and the earliest likely vote would be next week.
The draft was the result of seven weeks of tough negotiations between the US and China. "This is a very robust resolution," a US official said on condition of anonymity. "Clearly, this took a long time... it was a difficult process."
North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006 because of its multiple nuclear tests and rocket launches. China and the US had differed on how strongly to respond to Pyongyang's most recent test, with Washington urging harsh punitive measures and Beijing emphasising dialogue and milder UN steps confined to non-proliferation.
The Global Times, an influential Chinese tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party, said in an editorial that North Korea "deserves the punishment" of new sanctions, but China should "cushion Washington's harsh sanctions to some extent".
REUTERS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALSO WATCH YOUTUBE REPORT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi9dDSlXvJM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.marinij.com/general-news...e-missile-is-the-message-the-pentagon-hopes/1
CALIFORNIA NUKE TEST: THE MISSILE IS THE MESSAGE -- THE PENTAGON HOPES
By ROBERT BURNS Associated Press
Posted: 02/26/16, 8:26 AM PST | Updated: 19 hrs ago
0 Comments
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE -- Like a giant pen stroke in the sky, an unarmed Minuteman 3 nuclear missile roared out of its underground bunker on the California coastline Thursday and soared over the Pacific, inscribing the signature of American power amid growing worry about North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons capable of reaching U.S. soil.
When it comes to deterring an attack by North Korea or other potential adversaries, the missile is the message.
At 11:01 p.m. Pacific Standard Time Thursday, the Minuteman missile, toting a payload of test instruments rather than a nuclear warhead, leaped into the darkness in an explosion of flame. It arced toward its test range in the waters of the Kwajalein Atoll, an island chain about 2,500 miles southwest of Honolulu.
About 30 minutes later the re-entry vehicle that carries the missile's payload reached its target, Col. Craig Ramsey, commander of the 576th Flight Test Squadron, told an assembled group of observers, including Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and Adm. Cecil Haney, the top nuclear war-fighting commander.
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The missile test, dubbed "Glory Trip 218," was the second this month and the latest in a series designed to confirm the reliability of the Cold War-era missile and all its components. The Minuteman 3, first deployed in 1970, has long exceeded its original 10-year lifespan. It is so old that vital parts are no longer in production.
The Air Force operates 450 Minuteman missiles -- 150 at each of three missile fields in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. A few times a year, one missile is pulled from its silo and trucked to Vandenberg, minus its nuclear warhead, for a test launch.
Aside from confirming technical soundness, Minuteman test launches are the U.S. military's way of sharpening the message that forms the foundation of U.S. nuclear deterrence theory -- that if potential attackers believe U.S. nuclear missiles and bombs are ready for war at all times, then no adversary would dare start a nuclear fight.
The credibility of this message can be damaged by signs of weakness or instability in the nuclear weapons force. In 2013-14 the Associated Press documented morale, training, leadership and equipment problems in the Minuteman force, and in January the Air Force acknowledged to the AP that errors by a maintenance crew damaged an armed Minuteman in May 2014.
Work said in an interview ahead of Thursday's launch that he sees good progress in fixing the problems in the nuclear missile corps. He also said the Vandenberg test launches are critically important.
"It is a signal to anyone who has nuclear weapons that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons in defense of our country, if necessary," he said, adding later, "We do it to demonstrate that these missiles --- even though they're old -- they still remain the most effective, or one of the most effective, missiles in the world."
Air Force officials say the test launches are a morale booster because they give launch crews and others a chance to leave their usual duties and participate in an actual launch. They otherwise do 24-hour shifts, year-round, in underground missile command posts, hoping the call to combat never comes.
Constance Baroudos, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute think tank, sees great deterrent value in the Minuteman test launches.
"Deterrence basically doesn't work unless the threat is deemed credible," she said. "So every time we test ICBMs, we demonstrate not only that the weapons work but also that they are ready to be launched. When those tests are conducted, the Russians, the Chinese and other international actors are watching, and they send a message to a potential aggressor that they not do anything they would regret."
Together, the United States and Russia control the vast majority of the world's nuclear weapons, and both countries regularly conduct ICBM test launches. The Russians generally do them more often, at least in part because they have new missiles in development whereas the Minuteman 3 is the only U.S. ICBM. The U.S. Air Force is planning a new-generation ICBM, but it is not scheduled to begin entering the force until about 2030.
Pavel Podvig, an independent analyst of Russian nuclear forces and publisher of the RussianForces.org blog, said in an interview that Moscow puts less stock in the public messaging aspect of missile test launches than does Washington.
"They (the Russians) do want to make sure the missiles are still functioning," he said, "But the message is as much for themselves as for the outside world."
North Korea, on the other hand, aims for maximum political impact when it conducts missile test launches or detonates a nuclear device, as it did Jan. 6. The potential for North Korea to field a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop an intercontinental missile is among the worries American officials cite as justification for investing tens of billions of dollars in a new fleet of U.S. ICBMs and other types of nuclear weaponry.
Posted for educational and discussion, fair use purposes.
STARS AND STRIPES
International community turning up the heat on North Korea
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula could be stoked even higher with the U.N. Security Council finalizing new sanctions against the rogue nation, the U.S. test-firing an ICBM missile in a show of force, and the American and South Korean militaries preparing for their largest-ever military exercises.
But North Korea has shown no signs of backing down, with leader Kim Jong Un recently appointing hardliners to key national security positions ahead of the first ruling Workers’ Party congress in more than two decades in May.
Also, the North’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, on Thursday called the upcoming U.S.-South Korean Key Resolve exercise tantamount to a “declaration of war” and threatened to turn South Korea, the U.S. and U.S. bases in the Pacific into a “sea of fire.”
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., described the U.S.-proposed sanctions as the toughest in 20 years, and they’re clearly aimed at hitting the North in two crucial areas: its already-weak economy and its military.
“These sanctions, if adopted, would send an unambiguous and unyielding message to the DPRK regime,” Power said Thursday. “The world will not accept your proliferation. There will be consequences for your actions.”
A draft of the sanctions, which are expected to be nailed down in the coming days with key support from North Korea’s closest ally, China, include cutting off imports of aviation and rocket fuel — which could ground the country’s airline and hamper military flights and rocket launches — and exports of mineral resources that have provided Pyongyang with hard currency.
The sanctions also call for mandatory inspections of all North Korean cargo entering or leaving a country. An arms embargo would be widened to include small arms.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula could be stoked even higher with the U.N. Security Council finalizing new sanctions against the rogue nation, the U.S. test-firing an ICBM missile in a show of force, and the American and South Korean militaries preparing for their largest-ever military exercises.
But North Korea has shown no signs of backing down, with leader Kim Jong Un recently appointing hardliners to key national security positions ahead of the first ruling Workers’ Party congress in more than two decades in May.
Also, the North’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, on Thursday called the upcoming U.S.-South Korean Key Resolve exercise tantamount to a “declaration of war” and threatened to turn South Korea, the U.S. and U.S. bases in the Pacific into a “sea of fire.”
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., described the U.S.-proposed sanctions as the toughest in 20 years, and they’re clearly aimed at hitting the North in two crucial areas: its already-weak economy and its military.
“These sanctions, if adopted, would send an unambiguous and unyielding message to the DPRK regime,” Power said Thursday. “The world will not accept your proliferation. There will be consequences for your actions.”
A draft of the sanctions, which are expected to be nailed down in the coming days with key support from North Korea’s closest ally, China, include cutting off imports of aviation and rocket fuel — which could ground the country’s airline and hamper military flights and rocket launches — and exports of mineral resources that have provided Pyongyang with hard currency.
The sanctions also call for mandatory inspections of all North Korean cargo entering or leaving a country. An arms embargo would be widened to include small arms.
Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel flew to Seoul on Friday and goes to Beijing on Saturday to discuss implementation of the U.N. sanctions.
“This is a very important time to put our heads together and think about the way forward,” Russel told reporters on arrival in South Korea.
It is key for China to be on board with imposing sanctions, which have proven ineffective in the past. And it will be even more critical for Beijing to enforce them, given its concerns that too much pressure could lead to a sudden collapse of Kim’s regime, spawning a flood of refugees and the possible rise of a pro-West government on China’s border.
But China’s patience with its neighbor has clearly been fraying, and even while calling for negotiations with the North, it has agreed that it must be punished for its recent provocations. Still there are concerns over who would really pay the price for sanctions: when China did tighten its supply pipeline, an estimated 2.5 million North Koreans starved in 1994-96.
The current crisis on the peninsula began with North Korea’s fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6, followed a month later by a rocket launch that was widely seen as a test of ballistic missile technology that would allow Pyongyang to reach the continental U.S. with a nuclear warhead.
While most experts believe the North still has more work ahead to achieve that capability, particularly with any reliability, it has shown resolve in pushing ahead, no matter what the costs, calling the nuclear program its self-defense insurance against efforts to destabilize its government.
The U.S. has made several shows of force in recent weeks, sending a B-52 bomber on a low-level flyover of South Korea from Guam, then dispatching four F-22 fighters there from Okinawa. In the latest move, it launched an unarmed Minuteman III missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California late Thursday to show the effectiveness of U.S. intercontinental capabilities.
“We and the Russians and the Chinese routinely do test shots to prove that the operational missiles that we have are reliable,” Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work told reporters. “And that is a signal ... that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons in defense of our country if necessary.”
38 North, a website run by Johns Hopkins University that monitors North Korea, carried a report Thursday in which analyst Michael Madden wrote about the recent high-level appointments of three hardliners “who support a more belligerent policy toward the ROK (South Korea), the United States and Japan, and who generally do not favor North-South engagement.”
“Pyongyang watchers should expect the coming months to resemble the tense geostrategic environment last seen during the spring of 2013, after the North’s third nuclear test, when Pyongyang declared a national emergency, mobilized its military and declared that the safety of foreign citizens in the two Koreas could not be guaranteed,” analyst Michael Madden wrote.
alexander.paul@stripes.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------r
http://www.straitstimes.com/world/north-korea-faces-toughest-un-sanctions-in-over-two-decades
NORTH KOREA FACES TOUGHEST UN SANCTIONS IN OVER TWO DECADES
UNITED NATIONS • The United States has presented a draft United Nations Security Council resolution it negotiated with China that would dramatically tighten existing restrictions on North Korea after its Jan 6 nuclear test and create the toughest UN sanctions regime in more than two decades.
This was as the US military test-fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile in a week late on Thursday to demonstrate the reliability of American nuclear weapons at a time of rising strategic tensions with countries such as Russia and North Korea.
The unarmed Minuteman III missile blasted off from a silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California shortly before midnight, headed towards a target area near Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, in the South Pacific.
Deputy Defence Secretary Robert Work said the tests, conducted at least 15 times since January 2011, send a message to strategic competitors such as Russia, China and North Korea that Washington has an effective nuclear arsenal.
The draft resolution, presented the same day the missile test took place, would require UN member states to conduct mandatory inspections of all cargo passing through their territory to or from North Korea to look for illicit goods. Previously, they were required to do so only if they had reasonable grounds to believe there was illicit cargo.
Diplomats said that the US used the nearly two months of bilateral negotiations that at one point involved President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart to win China's support for unusually tough measures intended to persuade its ally North Korea to abandon its atomic weapons programme.
The proposal would close a gap in the UN arms embargo on Pyongyang by banning all weapons imports and exports. There would also be an unprecedented ban on the transfer to North Korea of any item that could directly contribute to the operational capabilities of the North Korean armed forces, such as trucks that could be modified for military purposes.
Other proposed measures include a ban on all supplies of aviation and rocket fuel to North Korea, a requirement for states to expel North Korean diplomats engaging in illicit activities, and blacklisting 17 North Korean individuals and 12 entities, including the National Aerospace Development Agency, the body responsible for a rocket launch earlier this month.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told reporters that the new measures, if approved, would be "the strongest set of sanctions imposed by the Security Council in more than two decades". She said they were aimed at the North's leadership, and "careful not to punish the North Korean people".
Several council diplomats predicted a meeting today to adopt the draft, but Russia's deputy UN envoy Petr Iliichev said Moscow needed time to study it and the earliest likely vote would be next week.
The draft was the result of seven weeks of tough negotiations between the US and China. "This is a very robust resolution," a US official said on condition of anonymity. "Clearly, this took a long time... it was a difficult process."
North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006 because of its multiple nuclear tests and rocket launches. China and the US had differed on how strongly to respond to Pyongyang's most recent test, with Washington urging harsh punitive measures and Beijing emphasising dialogue and milder UN steps confined to non-proliferation.
The Global Times, an influential Chinese tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party, said in an editorial that North Korea "deserves the punishment" of new sanctions, but China should "cushion Washington's harsh sanctions to some extent".
REUTERS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALSO WATCH YOUTUBE REPORT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi9dDSlXvJM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.marinij.com/general-news...e-missile-is-the-message-the-pentagon-hopes/1
CALIFORNIA NUKE TEST: THE MISSILE IS THE MESSAGE -- THE PENTAGON HOPES
By ROBERT BURNS Associated Press
Posted: 02/26/16, 8:26 AM PST | Updated: 19 hrs ago
0 Comments
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE -- Like a giant pen stroke in the sky, an unarmed Minuteman 3 nuclear missile roared out of its underground bunker on the California coastline Thursday and soared over the Pacific, inscribing the signature of American power amid growing worry about North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons capable of reaching U.S. soil.
When it comes to deterring an attack by North Korea or other potential adversaries, the missile is the message.
At 11:01 p.m. Pacific Standard Time Thursday, the Minuteman missile, toting a payload of test instruments rather than a nuclear warhead, leaped into the darkness in an explosion of flame. It arced toward its test range in the waters of the Kwajalein Atoll, an island chain about 2,500 miles southwest of Honolulu.
About 30 minutes later the re-entry vehicle that carries the missile's payload reached its target, Col. Craig Ramsey, commander of the 576th Flight Test Squadron, told an assembled group of observers, including Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and Adm. Cecil Haney, the top nuclear war-fighting commander.
Advertisement
The missile test, dubbed "Glory Trip 218," was the second this month and the latest in a series designed to confirm the reliability of the Cold War-era missile and all its components. The Minuteman 3, first deployed in 1970, has long exceeded its original 10-year lifespan. It is so old that vital parts are no longer in production.
The Air Force operates 450 Minuteman missiles -- 150 at each of three missile fields in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. A few times a year, one missile is pulled from its silo and trucked to Vandenberg, minus its nuclear warhead, for a test launch.
Aside from confirming technical soundness, Minuteman test launches are the U.S. military's way of sharpening the message that forms the foundation of U.S. nuclear deterrence theory -- that if potential attackers believe U.S. nuclear missiles and bombs are ready for war at all times, then no adversary would dare start a nuclear fight.
The credibility of this message can be damaged by signs of weakness or instability in the nuclear weapons force. In 2013-14 the Associated Press documented morale, training, leadership and equipment problems in the Minuteman force, and in January the Air Force acknowledged to the AP that errors by a maintenance crew damaged an armed Minuteman in May 2014.
Work said in an interview ahead of Thursday's launch that he sees good progress in fixing the problems in the nuclear missile corps. He also said the Vandenberg test launches are critically important.
"It is a signal to anyone who has nuclear weapons that we are prepared to use nuclear weapons in defense of our country, if necessary," he said, adding later, "We do it to demonstrate that these missiles --- even though they're old -- they still remain the most effective, or one of the most effective, missiles in the world."
Air Force officials say the test launches are a morale booster because they give launch crews and others a chance to leave their usual duties and participate in an actual launch. They otherwise do 24-hour shifts, year-round, in underground missile command posts, hoping the call to combat never comes.
Constance Baroudos, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute think tank, sees great deterrent value in the Minuteman test launches.
"Deterrence basically doesn't work unless the threat is deemed credible," she said. "So every time we test ICBMs, we demonstrate not only that the weapons work but also that they are ready to be launched. When those tests are conducted, the Russians, the Chinese and other international actors are watching, and they send a message to a potential aggressor that they not do anything they would regret."
Together, the United States and Russia control the vast majority of the world's nuclear weapons, and both countries regularly conduct ICBM test launches. The Russians generally do them more often, at least in part because they have new missiles in development whereas the Minuteman 3 is the only U.S. ICBM. The U.S. Air Force is planning a new-generation ICBM, but it is not scheduled to begin entering the force until about 2030.
Pavel Podvig, an independent analyst of Russian nuclear forces and publisher of the RussianForces.org blog, said in an interview that Moscow puts less stock in the public messaging aspect of missile test launches than does Washington.
"They (the Russians) do want to make sure the missiles are still functioning," he said, "But the message is as much for themselves as for the outside world."
North Korea, on the other hand, aims for maximum political impact when it conducts missile test launches or detonates a nuclear device, as it did Jan. 6. The potential for North Korea to field a nuclear warhead small enough to fit atop an intercontinental missile is among the worries American officials cite as justification for investing tens of billions of dollars in a new fleet of U.S. ICBMs and other types of nuclear weaponry.
Posted for educational and discussion, fair use purposes.
Last edited:
