Aloha: North Korea Announces Detailed Missile Flight Plan

In a transparent ploy to legitimize their upcoming "space launch," the North Koreans submitted plans of their ballistic missile launch to UN aviation and maritime agencies yesterday. More details emerge today as the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization releases its warning to aviators:

In a letter to ICAO earlier this week, the North said the launch would take place between April 4-8 and between 11:00 a.m. and 4.p.m. (KST), it added.

Of the two potential danger areas identified, one is in waters close to Japan's northeastern area and the other is in the East Sea, according to a map released by ICAO. The map appears to show that if successful, a multi-stage rocket would fly over Japan after shedding its first booster in the East Sea.

Digging further, I found the ICAO news release (PDF) which includes the coordinates of the two danger areas where the North Korean missile will drop its booster stages and created this map:

 

Connecting the dots between the launch site (orange triangle) and the two danger zones where the two stages will splash (red triangles), we can see where the missle could head --- again, according to the North Koreans themselves:

• They indeed plan to overfly Japan, shedding the first booster in the Sea of Japan.

• Depending on the range of the missile, the trajectory is making a bee-line for Hawaii.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Welcome, Jules Crittenden, LGF, Campaign Spot, doubleplusundead and Jawa Report readers.

Could it actually reach Hawaii? Who knows ... but the North Koreans did recently test an ICBM engine that would put California in reach. Whether that engine will power this missile is unknown.

Comments

[Grantman]

Oh, what a wonderful way to start the weekend.

Thanks for sharing.

[Stoutcat]

This just gets worse and worse. Does President Obama have ANYONE on staff who can explain the "nuances" of this to him? We can only hope and pray.

[Jon Brooks]

We the American people need to somehow skip past our tin man dictator and get the word to Israel to hit Iran as soon as feasebly possible. Yes this will ignite hell and possible 10's or 100's of thousands will die on all sides combined but to wait guarantees millions or billions at a later date. This also frees Israel from being having to be "proportionate" being a suprise attack. LOLOL

[TheBad]

Not to worry - President Training Wheels will use his powers of diplomacy to make everything better. Look at what a wonderful job he has done so far with the UK and Brazil.

Afterthought: remember the lambasting Dan Quayle received for misspelling a word? Strange Obama does not receive the same for misspelling the name of a nation's leader.

[Robert I. Eachus]

If I were in Obama's shoes, I would ask the military if they were ready to intercept the launch if the third stage burn was shorter than necessary to achieve orbit. I'd also ask the military what the minimum kiloton rating was for a response in kind if needed.

Then I'd make sure this leaked. Even if it didn't get rid of Dear Leader Jr., the leaked request should work wonders on relations with Iran. ;-) Hmm... Thinking about it, don't leak it, put it out as a press release, and have VOA transmit it in Korean and Persian.

"In other news, the President asked the USAF and US Navy to be prepared to shoot down the North Korean satellite launch, in case it is actually a nuclear missile aimed at Pearl Harbor. He also asked the minimum size of a nuclear response necessary to wipe out the North Korean leadership in that case... ;-)

Time it for just after a nice diplomatic message through channels that suggested that overflying Hawaii was not a good idea.

What about Japan? I think that the currently deployed missile defense systems can handle that case. It is just the short third stage burn that is problematic.

[mary]

Well, that's one way to clear up the birth certificate issue Barry....
He's in way over his head. If it's not in a poll or at the gym, he's not interested.

[col.smeag]

Sudden and spontaneous response from the White House:"ummm....ahhh....uhhh...Blame Bush...Ummm.. de-fund missile defense...blame Bush....uhhh..'Shut up Joe'...Everything is OK Folks nothing to see hear...etc"

McKittrick,
Just found you through the Jawa Report. Great site. If we're still here after the upcoming "missile test" I'll be back.

[Obama Voter]

I blame Bush.

[mare]

As a resident of Hawaii, this displeases me. Would someone please tell Obama to take this seriously. This administration is a bunch of clowns.

Nukes + psychotic leader = nothing good

[mare]

Is a bunch of clowns or are a bunch of clowns?

Either way, they're clowns.

[cbullitt]

I'm sure the new Cap and Trade on Dissent program (see IMAO) will keep the sheeple molified for the tenth of a second it will take the population of Honolulu to reach 1 million degrees.

[booboobritches]

How would hitting Kookifornia be bad for the US?

[Jean]

Of course a small yield weapon might get rid of those inconvenient birth records in Honolulu.

[JR]

Boy, you're really ringing the alarm bells. Why exactly "Pearl Harbor" and not just "Hawaii"? The closure area is hundreds of km long and tens of km wide - bigger than all of Hawai'i - and while it looks fairly close if you're using a crayon to connect the dots, tracing the expected flight path with reasonable precision shows that it's going to pass well south of any Hawaiian land.

I can't even tell what your thesis is here. Is it that NK is planning to secretly nuke Hawaii in a few weeks? Is it that they're going to "disguise" a weapons test as a satellite launch?

North Korea has never successfully launched a multi-stage rocket (peaceful or otherwise), so even a peaceful satellite launch would give them tons of useful data about building missiles. Since the US is going to protest the action either way, North Korea will get a much more sympathetic story out of it if their actions really are "just" a satellite launch. I can't understand why anyone thinks they'd try an actual missile test when they get just as much data -- plus a great alibi! -- out of a satellite launch.

[John McKittrick]

Why Pearl Harbor?

1. It's easy to find & plot on Google Earth.
2. It's the largest military target in the Pacific.

And the thesis is NK had 360 degrees from which to pick and they chose the most provocative one.

NK launched a Taepodong-1 missile in 1998 which indeed successfully staged 2 of its 3 stages. But you're right. We should not be concerned about this in the slightest.

*mounts unicorn and rides away*

[Bob B]

You do realize you're plotting a straight line on a two dimensional representation of a sphere, right? And you understand the implications of this? Is there a cartographer in the house?

[John McKittrick]

No, I did not "plot a straight line on a sphere".

I *connected* 3 discrete sets of lat/long coordinates (launch site, 2 staging splash areas). That's all. How it turned out is how it turned out.

[Drumwaster]

Is a bunch of clowns or are a bunch of clowns?

Either way, they're clowns.

If you are talking about the Administration as a single noun, the correct verb would be "is". If you are talking about the plural individuals who make up the Administration, it should be "are".

{/knows what the meaning of "is" is...}

[former_rocketman]

John - It's been a long time since I was involved with either satellite launches or BMD, but I think the Earth's rotation makes the problem more complicated. The Hawaiian Islands will move some distance to the east while the NK rocket is on a roughly ESE trajectory. So a possible splash down point, say from a "tragic malfunction of the 3rd stage causing the satellite to fall short of achieving orbit" (like they forgot to remove a reentry vehicle cover before launch, perhaps?) could wind up along a line roughly parallel and south of the islands.

I may also be reading way too much into the ICAO bulletin, but closure area #2 seems to be slightly to the south and a bit angled vs a straight projection of the launch site and closure area 1. It could also be a distortion of plotting a 3D trajectory onto a 2D grid.

Or the NK's may just have been reading too much old Tom Clancey (Debt of Honor).

[JR]

The 'most provocative' azimuth is the one that crosses directly over Hawaii; the one they chose passes at least 100km south of the islands. The direction they chose is special for a different reason: it's the one that makes most efficient use of the earth's rotation to get a free boost to orbit. That the two are only seven degrees apart (give or take) is a coincidence they're happy to exploit for political purposes, but I wouldn't read anything into it other than the physics unless they mention Honolulu in the press.

You're right on the second stage of the TD-1... but that's one successful staging event in ten years, and no fully successful multi-stage launches. You can give them partial credit but their staging tech is not yet ready for prime time.

I understand Pearl Harbor is the biggest target in the Pacific, but I'm still not sure whether you're implying that they'll actually try to hit it with a nuke or that they're just blustering.

So, I'm not saying don't worry about the TD-2, but this is precisely the threat our BMDS is designed to handle. I guess I don't believe that it's a remotely credible weapon yet: it still requires days (weeks? months?) of preparation on an exposed outdoor gantry during which it's vulnerable to all manner of US surveillance and firepower. If it does get off the ground and head down a hostile azimuth, we've got lots of radar, a few GMD interceptors, and if worse comes to worst, the Aegis ships in the Pacific Fleet could take a potshot.

For now, though, that seven degrees of azimuth keeps it from being a "beeline". So take a deep breath and just be happy that they're flight testing somewhere that all of our radars can get a good look. Oh, and cross your fingers that the first stage doesn't crap out and scatter debris all over Japan.

[Phil Dickson]

Wow. What a bizarre, paranoid blog you've got here.

1. Check your facts - closest approach of that trajectory to Hawaii is *several* hundred km. What did you do - eyeball it?

2. By no means did they have 360 degrees of azimuth to pick from. Even a rudimentary understanding of rockets would tell you they had a relatively narrow range to choose from, due to the limitations of that vehicle and, well, physics.

3. Try to advance a coherent point (you'll find it makes a refreshing change) before resorting to sarcasm (e.g. "mounts unicorn", etc)

[Eric]

A hostile communist country (and a clearly-defined enemy of the United States) launching anything our direction (I don't care if it's a satellite, and I don't care if the trajectory's several hundred kilometers off of Hawaii) needs to be reined-in. Period.

[John McKittrick]

"Physics made me launch that missile toward Hawaii --- I had no choice!" -- Kim Jong-il

Phil's defense of Kim's provocation is ... awesome.

As for being paranoid? Frankly, that's our job in defense. Maybe you'll thank us one day.

[George William Herbert]

Physics and rocket science are rather unforgiving in this case. The trajectory is what happens from a "Due East" launch - the most energy efficient one - from their launch site. They probably have no chance of making orbit from other trajectories given what we think we know about the vehicle.

That actually makes this the LEAST provocative trajectory - it's the one which is most likely to be credibly a real launch attempt and not a missile test (though, for the first two stages, they're probably not much different an event).

Israel avoids dropping launch vehicle stages into Jordan and Saudi Arabia by launching west, but it loses arguably 50-70% of the vehicle's payload capacity to do that. North Korea probably hasn't got the excess performance to do that here.

Every other launch vehicle on earth launches either due east, or into higher inclinations as required for the payload, for more advanced high performance rockets. But early launches pretty much all go due east, Israel excepted.

North Korea really hasn't got a lot of good options. The "near threat" is Japan perceiving any launch as a threat - and Japan's downrange of just about any possible launch azimuth you can take, from anywhere in North Korean territory, and not be heading Westward. Geography isn't all that flexible, either.

I'm worried about North Korea too. They certainly are neither stable nor rational by western standards. But ascribing malice to decisions that physics clearly legitimately dicated is not useful. If they mean to attack us they are not likely to give us a week or more worth of heads up warning. They'd just launch. What they're doing is "the right thing to do" in case of an actual orbital test, to try and avoid civilian casualties from rocket stages landing out to sea.

Whether they should be launching, given the UN sanctions etc, at least they're telegraphing it in a responsible manner, as other space launch countries do...

[lobo235]

John McK: "at least they're telegraphing it a responsible manner?"

Mugger to victim: "I am now going to shoot you, but at least I gave you a heads up."

[John McKittrick]

lobo: fyi, you're quoting George William Herbert, not me. Comment format here is "comment, then commenter name."

btw, I agree with you. GWH has taken the NK bait hook/line/sinker ("it's just an innocent space launch").

[George William Herbert]

It could be many things, including a nuclear attack on Hawaii or Alaska (or less credibly, Seattle).

The question isn't "what is it" - nobody here knows, be realistic. The question is, "with what they have announced, is it clearly not what they said it is?"

What they have announced is entirely consistent with a legitimate attempt at a space launch. Physics and geography and spaceflight operations all line up nicely there.

Whether that's the direction the rocket flies, whether they have innocent intentions or not, all we can know for sure is whether their statements are internally consistent on this matter. And that, they are.

Again - I don't trust them, either. But I do know spaceflight and space launch vehicles, apparently unlike most of the people here. Which is fine - it's specialist knowledge. But it is important to know those sorts of things if you're trying to interpret the internal consistency of future launch claims.

Again - I don't trust them, either. But the announcements aren't evidence of falsehood.

There are plenty of examples of transparently false cover stories from all comers in history. This isn't one of them. It could be a consistent well done cover story covering intent to do something malign. As I said - I don't trust them, but I don't know their intentions to be malign either.

[Jean]

Several posters here are giving North Korea the benefit of the doubt. The North Korean regime has long since lost that right.

The planned launch is a violation of UN Security Council resolution (1695, from 2006).

The launch is provocative, if you can't conduct a peaceful launch through a window that doesn't overfly your neighbors and threaten a major US defense installation -- build a better rocket, lease a foreign launch site, launch from a ship, or better yet, use a commercial launch service.

If this is a peaceful space flight, the North Koreans have cheaper, more efficient, and less risky options. They do not need to emulate a warshot and put the Japanese in the debris field.

[Darren]

The Japanese have their own Aegis-class ships that can (and have) fired the SM-3 in the BMD role.

Even if they choose not to hit the upper stages, it might be worth the cost of the SM-3 to powder the booster stage a few miles from separation. Don't know if the SM-3 can do a tail-chase intercept but it sure would be fun to watch. Kind of like breaking a clay and hitting the fragments with your other barrel...one of those "Yeah, I'm THAT good" moments.