April Rocket and Missile Showers

This past April 2012, rainy season? Showers from above and even attempted showers. After all, what good is a wonderful nuclear weapon if you don’t have the means to deliver that cutie to the enemy of your choice? Deliver it by a bomber? That so 1980s! Not to mention that planes are so easy to shoot down, and your bomber crew could get killed. Oooooh! Can’t have that! ‘Sides, the United States can launch nukes from far, far away and even from undersea via big old nuclear submarines. Naw, rockets and missiles are the way to deliver the gift that stops all giving.

April showers kind of started with a failed North Korean attempt to launch a rocket capable of delivering hate to locations as far away as Europe or Hawaii. On Friday, April 13^th, under the guise of sending a weather satellite into orbit, North Korea fired off its Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 rocket (left above) amid much hoopla and lots of invited foreign guests and journalists. Fortunately for most of the world, that launch followed a North Korea tradition, blowing apart shortly after take-off. With that humiliation safely in hand, the North began preparing for its third underground nuclear test to prove to the world that they can at least blow more stuff up than their own rockets. After all, in the world of geo-politics and military hardware, size matters… even if it often is just for show.

“[A] pair of German missile experts have gone public with evidence suggesting that new missiles that the North rolled out with much pomp at a parade just days later were mock-ups, and clumsy ones at that… After a close analysis of photographs from the parade, the missile experts, Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, found what they said were tell-tale signs of fakery. The warhead’s surface, they wrote in a paper posted on a respected arms control Web site, is undulated, ‘as if a thin metal sheet was fixed onto a simple inner frame.’ The missiles were slightly different from each other, with covers mounted horizontally on one missile and vertically on another, and they did not even fit the launchers they were carried on, the analysts said.” New York Times, April 27. So if you are wondering what young Kim is up to, it does seem to be all about perception.

Then India, which has been watching already unstable Pakistan, a nuclear power, move more virulently into an Islamist camp, wanted to send a message that it was more than capable of handling any aggressive moves, particularly if their northern neighbor harbored any thoughts of taking over the hotly contested, primarily Muslim, state of Kashmir. What better message than a new and improved missile (right above), sent soaring into the air for the world to admire?

“India declared the launch of the Agni 5 [named for the Hindu God of Fire] missile as success and that the country had joined a new club of nations and capable of long-range nuclear strikes. Once operational, the Agni 5 will be able to carry a nuclear warhead over 3,000 miles. India's rocket test and came just days after North Korea's failed launch, but didn't spark the same international uproar… The Indian government says the missile, which can reach as far Beijing, is a game-changer in the region, but has been quick to emphasize that the missile is meant as a deterrent.” NPR.org, April 19^th.

The US mildly castigated India for its effort, and the Chinese noted the American double standard pointing out how much stronger the U.S. reaction was to the North Korean effort. The PRC government emphasized that there should be more “strategic cooperation” China and India, but their state-controlled press, notably the Global Times, slammed the Indian effort as a “missile delusion,” adding that “India should not overestimate its strength.”

OK, “I can blow the world all to hell” fans, Pakistan was not about to let its arch enemy India have their way with nuclear weapons platforms. On April 25^th, Pakistan joined the fray by launching an intermediate-range ballistic missile: “Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, a retired lieutenant general who leads the Pakistani military’s Strategic Plans Division, said the improved version of his country’s missile, which can carry a nuclear warhead, would ‘further strengthen and consolidate Pakistan’s deterrence capabilities.’ Pakistani officials said [the April 25^th] test was witnessed by senior military authorities, scientists and engineers involved in the country’s missile program. The impact point of the missile was said to be in the Indian Ocean.

“Mansoor Ahmed, a defense analyst in Islamabad, the capital, said Wednesday’s launching appeared to be of an improved intermediate-range missile, with a possible range of 466 to 620 miles. The missile could be equipped with warheads designed to evade missile-defense systems, he added.” New York Times, April 25^th. Makes it so much easier to sleep at night knowing that there are a lot of angry or fearful nations on earth with nuclear weapons and the increasing means of delivering them farther and farther away. Not to mention anti-Western groups desperately wanting to get their hands on such weapons to show the world how many Americans or Europeans they can kill or jealous nations believing that somehow, maybe they should have such weapons if their enemies have them. The only problem with all that extra sleep at night is whether or not you get to wake up.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I keep remembering that it really takes only one slip with one nuclear weapon to destabilize the entire planet… the worst kind of global warming.