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RTT News
May 10, 2013

Senior U.S. defense officials underscored the importance of ballistic missile defense modernization efforts requested in the fiscal 2014 budget proposal citing disturbing trends in Iran, North Korea, Syria and elsewhere around the globe.

“The threat continues to grow as our potential adversaries are acquiring a greater number of ballistic missiles, increasing their range and making them more complex, survivable, reliable and accurate,” Navy Vice Adm. J.D. Syring, Director of the Missile Defense Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a testimony on Thursday.

“The missile defense mission is becoming more challenging as potential adversaries incorporate [ballistic missile defense] countermeasures,” he reported.

Syring said the Missile Defense Agency “is engaged either bilaterally or multilaterally with nearly two dozen countries and international organizations,” including NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council. He reported “good progress in our work with our international partners.”

The budget requests $9.2 billion in fiscal 2014 and $45.7 billion over future years to develop and deploy missile defense capabilities.

Madelyn Creedon, Assistant Secretary of Defense for global strategic affairs, told the panel that these capabilities would both protect the U.S. homeland and strengthen regional missile defenses.

The administration remains committed to developing proven and cost-effective missile defense capabilities through the phased advance approach to regional missile defense, Creedon noted in her written statement.

“This approach puts emphasis on a flexible military toolkit with forces that are mobile and scalable. They underwrite deterrence in peacetime, but can be surged in crisis to meet defense requirements,” she said. …

Read on: www.rttnews.com/2114860/growing-threat-to-us-as-enemies-acquiring-more-ballistic-missiles-senate-told.aspx

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Yonhap News
By Kim Eun-jung
April 29, 2013

South Korea and the United States are set to complete a two-month joint military drill, the Combined Forces Command said Monday, amid high inter-Korean tensions due to the North Korea’s warlike threats and an endangered joint industrial complex in the communist nation.

The Foal Eagle exercise, which began in March after Pyongyang’s Feb. 12 nuclear test that invited additional U.N. sanctions to be slapped against the isolated nation, has heightened tension on the Korean Peninsula as the communist country angrily responded to the exercise that involved nuclear-capable bombers and stealth F-22 jets sent from overseas U.S. bases. The exercise officially ends Tuesday.

Although Pyongyang has routinely called the annual training a rehearsal for a northward invasion, its rhetoric turned more hostile this year under young leader Kim Jong-un, even threatening nuclear strikes against the South and the U.S.

In early March, the North announced that it had nullified the 60-year-old armistice agreement that ended the Korean War, though Seoul and the U.N. said the pact cannot be discarded unilaterally.

Further raising tensions, Pyongyang in early April barred South Korean workers from entering the Kaesong industrial complex, leading Seoul to pull its workers from the site after Pyongyang rejected its ultimatum to join formal negotiations on restarting the stalled operations.

Built in 2004 just north of the border, the industrial complex has served as a rare symbol of inter-Korea cooperation and a valued source of hard currency for the impoverished North.

In response to the exercise, the North has placed two intermediate-range Musudan missiles and several other Scud missiles on its east coast and hidden them in underground facilities since early April, sparking speculations that it may conduct a provocative launch. …

Read on: http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2013/04/29/2/0301000000AEN20130429005400315F.HTML

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The Huffington Post
By Jerry Kroth
April 12, 2013

In view of the fact that the U.S. military has quite unexpectedly announced North Korea has the capability of launching a nuclear weapon atop a missile, and in view of the fact that the young, untested, unstable, paranoid, and maybe even trigger-happy, North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, is as labile as he is, wouldn’t it be advisable for the craven American media to at least try to mention that the U.S. is, in fact, provoking North Korea by engaging in its ridiculously inflammatory military exercises?

There is almost no mention of the military exercises we are engaged in right across the border from North Korea using thousands of troops, huge artillery ensembles, stealth bombers, and dozens of naval support vessels.

How is the paranoid regime in the North to know we are simply engaged in harmless “exercises” instead of using the term exercises as a ruse to initiate an aggressive, first strike? …

Read on: www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-kroth/north-korea-and-american-_b_3065651.html

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The Washington Free Beacon
By Bill Gertz
April 1, 2013

China has placed military forces on heightened alert in the northeastern part of the country as tensions mount on the Korean peninsula following recent threats by Pyongyang to attack, U.S. officials said.

Reports from the region reveal the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recently increased its military posture in response to the heightened tensions, specifically North Korea’s declaration of a “state of war” and threats to conduct missile attacks against the United States and South Korea.

According to the officials, the PLA has stepped up military mobilization in the border region with North Korea since mid-March, including troop movements and warplane activity.

China’s navy also conducted live-firing naval drills by warships in the Yellow Sea that were set to end Monday near the Korean peninsula, in apparent support of North Korea, which was angered by ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills that are set to continue throughout April.

North Korea, meanwhile, is mobilizing missile forces, including road-mobile short- and medium-range missiles, according to officials familiar with satellite imagery of missile bases.

The missile activity is believed to be North Korea’s response to the ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises that last week included highly publicized flights by two B-2 strategic nuclear bombers near North Korean territory as part of annual military exercises.

North Korea’s government announced last week that since March 26 its missile and artillery forces have been placed on the highest alert status. …

Read on: http://freebeacon.com/border-patrol/

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The Guardian
March 21, 2013

Kim Jong-un oversees mock drone strike as North Korea threatens military bases in Japan and on Guam

Link to video: North Korea threatens US airbases in Japan

North Korea has said it will attack US military bases on Japan and the Pacific island of Guam if provoked, a day after its leader, Kim Jong-un, oversaw a mock drone strike on South Korea.

The North also held an air raid drill on Thursday after accusing the United States of preparing a military strike using bombers that have overflown the Korean peninsula as part of drills between South Korean and US forces.

North Korea has stepped up its rhetoric in response to what it calls “hostile” drills between South Korea and the United States. It has also been angered by the imposition of fresh UN sanctions that followed its nuclear test on 12 February.

Separately, South Korea said a hacking attack on the servers of local broadcasters and banks on Wednesday originated from an IP address in China, raising suspicions that the intrusion came from North Korea.

“The United States is advised not to forget that our precision target tools have within their range the Anderson air force base on Guam where the B-52 takes off, as well as the Japanese mainland where nuclear powered submarines are deployed and the navy bases on Okinawa,” the North’s supreme military command spokesman was quoted as saying by the KCNA news agency. …

Read on: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/21/north-korea-threatens-attack-us

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The Hankyoreh
By Park Hyun, Park Min-hee and Jeong Nam-ku
Janury 29, 2013

China, Japan and the US expanding missile interceptor technology as tensions rise in Northeast Asia

With North Korea declaring its intention to push ahead with a third nuclear test following the United Nations Security Council resolution on its launch of a long-range rocket, it seems hardly a coincidence that the US, China, and Japan have launched their own interceptor missiles and spy satellites. As the intensity of the North Korean nuclear crisis soars and the strategic competition between the US and China, and between China and Japan, heats up in the Asia-Pacific region, military tensions are on the rise in Northeast Asia.

On Jan. 26 (local time), the US Defense Department announced that it had succeeded in a test of a missile defense system that can intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that are aimed at the continental US while they are still outside the atmosphere. This test is part of a project that is being conducted to defend the continental US from the ICBM threat posed by North Korea and Iran.

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), a section of the US Defense Department, said, “We were successful in our launch of a three-stage ground-based interceptor (GBI) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.”

The test was conducted as part of the development of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD). A ballistic missile’s trajectory is divided into the launch phase, a middle phase when it is in outer space beyond the atmosphere, and a final phase where it enters the atmosphere once again. GMD refers to intercepting a ballistic missile in this middle phase.

“We didn’t launch a real missile to serve as a target for the interceptor,” the MDA said. “However, if such a target missile had existed, the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) that was attached to the interceptor rocket would have collided with the target and destroyed it.” …

read on: www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/571778.html

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Voice of Russia – UK Edition
November 3, 2012

South Korea won`t develop its own anti-missile defense system. Seoul is not interested in joining Washington’s plans to build up missile defenses in the Asia-Pacific region. The announcement comes after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta`s recent visit to the Korean Peninsula.

Officially, Seoul opposes technical aspects of the global anti-missile defense system in Asia, saying that South Korea is interested in protecting itself from missiles launched at a range of just 500-1000 km (obviously, from Pyongyang), while the US system is designed to work at a much greater range. But the real reason behind the argument is perhaps that Seoul does not want to get on its northern neighbor’s nerves, to say nothing about China as Beijing is a major opponent of the U.S. anti-missile plans in Asia.

Washington’s allies in the West seem to be fed up with the issue of US anti-missile defense plans. It looks as if they would like to distance themselves from this US project which is hardly possible amid intense pressure from the U.S. Now Washington has turned its sights to Asia. …

Read on: http://ruvr.co.uk/2012_11_03/Seoul-US-missile-defense/

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www.bangkokpost.com
October 7, 2012

South Korea plans to announce a new deal with the United States aimed at extending the range of its ballistic missiles to cover the whole of North Korea, a report said Saturday. …

The official declined to discuss details but a diplomatic source told Yonhap the agreement would more than double the range of Seoul’s ballistic missiles to 800 kilometres (500 miles), from the current limit of 300 km.

It would mean the whole of North Korea would be within reach but the missiles’ maximum payload would reportedly stay at 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds).

The existing deal with Washington, which allows Seoul limited access to US missile technology, is up for renewal at the end of the year.

All of South Korea is within striking distance of North Korean missiles and President Lee Myung-Bak said in March that Seoul needed a “realistic adjustment” of its missile capabilities. …

Read in full: www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/315807/s-korea-set-to-announce-us-missile-deal-report

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news24online.com
August 24, 2012

The United States is in discussions with close ally Japan about expanding a missile defence system in Asia, the top US general said.

Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was yesterday commenting on a Wall Street Journal report that the US is discussing positioning an early warning radar in southern Japan, supplementing one already in place in the country’s north, to contain threats from North Korea and to counter China’s military.

The State Department, however, said the missile defense system is not directed against China. Dempsey said no decisions have been reached on expanding the radar.

“But it’s certainly a topic of conversation because missile defense is important to both of our nations,” Dempsey told reporters at the start of a meeting with his visiting Japanese counterpart, Gen. Shigeru Iwasaki, at the Pentagon. Japan has worked closely with the US for several years on missile defense, and has both land- and sea-based missile launchers.

North Korea’s ballistic missiles are considered a threat to security in the Asia-Pacific region because of the risk of conflict erupting on the divided and heavily militarised Korean peninsula, and because of the secretive North’s nuclear weapons program. …

Read on: www.news24online.com/us-missile-defense-for-nkorea-threat-not-china_LatestNews24_1241.aspx

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RT
August 26, 2012

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un says Seoul and Washington are really trying his country’s patience with an unceasing caravan of joint military drills. This summer the Korean Peninsula has already witnessed two major US-led war games.

­Overall more than 30,000 US troops, practically all the American military contingent in South Korea, reinforced by 3,000 troops from overseas, are taking part in joint war games with the South Korean army that started on August 20.

Despite the stated defensive nature, the annual drill known as Ulchi Freedom Guardian has predictably roused the attention of ever-wary Pyongyang.

The new North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, acknowledged the great threat to his country and claimed the war games are in fact training for a preemptive nuclear attack.

The leader assured North Korean army is ready to meet “deadly blows” in “an all-out counter-offensive” in case the country’s territory is violated or even a single shell falls on North Korean soil …

The two countries exchange threats of military action quite often, fortunately thus far avoiding a full-scale conflict. Pyongyang has proven nuclear capabilities while the US military bases in South Korea are rumored to possess nuclear weapons stockpiles, which means a military conflict between Pyongyang and Seoul could escalate into a local nuclear war.

In full: http://rt.com/news/north-korea-war-threat-585/

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