Missile Launch

There are a lot of ballistic missiles being shown off this week, starting with the Chinese displaying 16 of the mobile  DF 31AG which is mounted on an all-terrain vehicle that will allow it to go almost anywhere.  It has a range of 6200 miles and has multiple warheads.  Apparently, they were doing some testing over the weekend and letting everyone know what the targets were going to be - missile silos and F-22 fighters.  Good luck with that.  There is a nice picture of a test the Chinese did in July in The Aviationist.  A commercial airline pilot just happened to be in the right place at the right time and took a good shot.

North Korea would have been missing something if it had not launched another missile over towards Japan but on a very high arc not seen very often.  It reportedly came down a few miles short of a commercial airliner passing by.  Another thing for the flying public to worry about.

The US fired off a THAAD interceptor and also launched a Minuteman III, which it does regularly to prove those missiles in the ground still work, but it went 4200 miles landing near Kwajalein where we used to do all of our defensive missile testing.  They don't really have to fly that far to prove the point that they are working, but why not?  Since we are having so much fun, it seems appropriate.

People outside the defense community are probably yawning through all of this, but this is not just a fun time for everyone to enjoy.  Everybody is trying to prove something and most of the things they are doing have something to do with lethality and survivability - something North Korea has seemed to miss.  Being able to heft a warhead 6000 miles is a neat trick and not as easy as it sounds.  Doing it from a missile silo or a mobile launcher is a lot trickier and much harder.  Yes, the North might be able to launch a warhead that far, but it is sitting on a very exposed platform just minutes before it is launched.   If they think we would let them load it up and just sit there watching, they might think about that a little.