North Korea Ready to Test Missile?

North Korea Planning to Test Long Range Missile

I'm hoping that this is another N. Korean ploy to get attention.

If not, it will mean more tension in East Asia.... an area that is already volatile because of all the countries in the region jokying for position to control the various interests there.

And as usual, I am less concerned about N. Korea itself. That country has a limited ability to bring harm to the United States. I'm much more concerned about the U.S. reaction to what N. Korea does. The U.S. response is what presents the real danger to the region. If the warmongers in Washington D.C. (who ironically never served in a war) miscalculate and over react, it could spark an angry and even crazier response from N. Korea or China. At that point, the chain of events becomes unpredictable, and probably even uncontrollable.

I am convinced that the Chinese may enter a U.S.- North Korean war on the side of the North Koreans, just as they did before. China does not want a Westernized Korea (South Korea) or any sort of Democracy on its border, under any circumstances. China sees this as a grave threat to its security and national interests. Chinas main concern here is that a free & unified Korea would mean U.S. military bases on its border. U.S. diplomacy experts must come up with a way (preferably an international treaty) that would reassure China that this would not happen. The U.S. must agree that in the event of a collapse of North Korea that there would be no U.S. military forces stationed north of the current dividing line (The DMZ) between the two Koreas.

Story here... Additional report from the BBC.

In a related development... U.S. officials have been cited as saying that the U.S. would not try to shoot down the test missile, because of a lack of confidence that the anti-missile system would work. NOW THEY FINALLY ADMIT IT!!!! Not a very good time to admit to it.

But the U.S. actually has two different types of missile defense systems.... Of course no one would suggest that they use the U.S. based missile defense system (the one with all the controversy). The North Korean missile would have to be close to the U.S. in order to be shot down.

However, there is another anti-missile system that the U.S. has called TMD (Theater Missile Defense). This is a smaller variant of the U.S. based system, and it's portable, able to be moved to most locations or "theaters" of operation in the world...hence the name Theater Missile Defense.

This system operates from trucks and from U.S. Navy ships. Why is this not being deployed? The TMD system is actually more reliable than the larger U.S. land based system....and should already be deployed...it has been around for some time now.