U.S. Ships to Detect North Korean Missiles in East Sea

The weekly magazine Defense News reported on August 30 that under the U.S.’ Missile Defense (MD) system, U.S. Navy ships would be deployed to the East Sea of Korea from September to monitor the launch of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

The U.S. plans to send three destroyers and a cruiser by the end of this year and 15 destroyers and three cruisers in turn by 2006. The ships will have a patrolling mission targeting missiles.

Defense News also said, however, that there are mixed opinions about the effectiveness of the new U.S. missile shield.

Republican Senator Wayne Allard, a supporter of the MD system, said that the MD in the East Sea will have certain defensive capabilities against North Korea’s missiles, which are the biggest threats the U.S. is facing. His remarks suggest that the MD system might deal with the Chinese missile threat in the future.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon`s chief weapons test evaluator during the Clinton administration, Philip Coyle, said that some people working on MD reported that an anti-missile missile hits nothing but a missile that flies directly in front. He also said that the Cobra Dane radar, which will be used for the MD system, cannot detect North Korean missiles since the radar was originally designed during the Cold War era to track Soviet missiles that fly over the horizon, but the North Korean missiles have different flight paths.