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WASHINGTON » The Pentagon announced Friday it will spend $1 billion to add 14 interceptors to an Alaska-based missile defense system, responding to what it called faster-than-anticipated North Korean progress on nuclear weapons and missiles.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said he is determined to protect the U.S. homeland and stay ahead of any North Korean threat. He acknowledged that the interceptors already in place have had poor test performances.
"We will strengthen our homeland defense, maintain our commitments to our allies and partners, and make clear to the world that the United States stands firm against aggression," Hagel said during a news conference at the Pentagon.
He said the 14 additional interceptors will be installed at Fort Greely, Alaska, where 26 already stand in underground silos, connected to communications systems and operated by soldiers at Greely and at Colorado Springs, Colo. The interceptors are designed to lift out of their silos, soar beyond the atmosphere and deploy a "kill vehicle" that can lock onto a targeted warhead and obliterate it.
Hagel also cited a previously announced Pentagon plan to place an additional radar in Japan to provide early warning of a North Korean missile launch and to assist in tracking it.
The ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, part of the U.S. missile defense shield, is at Barking Sands Missile Range on Kauai, and in June 2009 former Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered possible use of the system when North Korea threatened to fire a ballistic missile in the path of the state and said it could reach Hawaii.
The Pentagon in 2010 began planning a multimillion-dollar program to increase missile testing on Kauai that would defend against North Korean threats.
Kauai’s Aegis Ashore testing system features land-based missile defense capability similar to ship-based ballistic missile systems on 21 Navy ships, including cruisers and destroyers at Pearl Harbor.
A portion of the $1 billion cost of the expanded system at Fort Greely will come from scrapping the final phase of a missile defense system the U.S. is building in Europe, Hagel said. That system is aimed mainly at defending against a missile threat from Iran; key elements are already in place.
Hagel cited three recent developments in North Korea that prompted the Obama administration to act: a nuclear test in February deemed reckless by Washington and condemned by the U.N. Security Council; Pyongyang’s launch in December of a rocket that put a satellite into space and demonstrated mastery of some of the technologies needed to produce a long-range nuclear missile; and last April’s public display of a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, the KN-08.
Navy Adm. James Winnefeld Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the KN-08 is believed capable of reaching U.S. territory.
Although not mentioned by Hagel, North Korea raised tensions further by threatening March 7 to pre-emptively attack the U.S. Among its recent declarations, North Korea has said it will no longer recognize the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, though it has made such remarks before.
Winnefeld said the administration is seeking to make clear to new North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, grandson of the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, that he would lose catastrophically by attacking the U.S. or U.S. allies.
"And we believe that this young lad ought to be deterred by that. And if he’s not, we’ll be ready," Winnefeld said.
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