Setback in US Missile Defense Against North Korea

It has become known that America’s second test of its Missile Defense (MD) system against long-distance ballistic missiles of North Korea was aborted on May 25. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency reported that the MD system test was conducted at 7:15 a.m. But target missiles failed to reach aimed altitude after take-off and instead precipitated during the flight. The test was then postponed eight or ten minutes before the interceptor flight.

Meanwhile, the American press announced on May 26 that the Bush administration’s budget proposal for the national MD system of $310 million is likely to be cut substantially.

The Senate Committee on Armed Services cut by $85 million the budget proposal made in preparation of a “rogue” state attack on Europe and the U.S. The U.S. House also cut $160 million of spending on the missile system.

Carl Levin, a democratic senator and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services criticized the Bush administration for requesting huge amount of budget for the critical missile defense system even though the nation’s negotiations to build up a missile defense system in Poland and Czech is at an early state.

Prior to this, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asked the House leadership led by speaker Nancy Pelosi to process the budget for the missile defense system.

The Secretaries Rice and Gates stressed in a letter that the U.S. should start to establish a missile defense system at the very least by next year, matching an analysis by U.S. intelligence agencies that states that Iran could invent a long-range missile reaching Europe and America by 2015.

sechepa@donga.com