“How high can a Patriot go?”
Thank you. The Japanese are going ballistic (pun intended) over this, bordering on the hysterical.
The Nork missile would be 60 miles overhead and on its second stage by the time it passed over Japan, which it is very unlikely to do. No Patriot would reach it.
The Norks have declared that they will be launching on a southern route that would pass between Japan and Okinawa, way too high for any Patriots.
We do have some AEGIS cruisers that could knock it down right off the S Korean coast.
Aegis SM-3s have kill vehicles that are not aerodynamic and are incapable of intercepting anything in the atmosphere.
And current SM-3s do not have the ability to intercept an ICBM in ascent phase, and can’t reach the altitude one flies at in midcourse.
See slide 15:
http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2011IAMD/Pandolfe.pdf
The SM-3 Blk IIB can get an ICBM in ascent, but those won’t IOC till 2018 at best.
So there is absolutely nothing we or the Japanese have that can shoot down this launch unless it has an early malfunction and falls towards Japan, OR it is aimed towards Alaska - the GBIs there would have a chance.
To spank the monkey here (i.e. whip Kim Jong Un’s “Happy Birthday Grandfather Kim Il Sung” Taepodong-3’s mother scratchin’ as*) we need a plausible territorial incursion. That will only occur from the South Korean’s perspective. That means they need to shoot it down if it in any way goes over the various South Korean islands just off the coast of North Korea, and they could reach it I believe. The only other solution is to fire at errant, offcourse and threatening reentry fragments of it, once they/it came down near Okinawa,Japan (if they did go in that direction) but it is more bluff than anything else. However, all the more impetus to develop a system to shoot these sons of bitches down at such high altitudes and rapid trajectories, something which is not possible right now. Let’s see what the NOTAMs are coming out soon, any warnings by DPRK to international maritime or aviation organizations. You can bet Cobra Ball, Rivet Joint and KH-11B (or “Son of KH-11”, i.e. KH-12), etc. are watching closely. I personally would love nothing more than the target to be destroyed ON THE LAUNCH PAD by our teams, but that of course, would be a) an act of war and b) very risky, might not get the team back, and c) it is not October with poll ratings that suck, so Obama would not risk it.