US DoD to boost missile defence to thwart potential North Korean threat

The US Department of Defence (DoD) announced on 15 March it would spend nearly USD1 billion to beef up its ground-based missile defence capability against North Korea.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said the United States will take a series of steps to stave off nuclear missile threats from Iran and North Korea, although the emphasis with placing 14 ground-based interceptors (GBIs) in Alaska would appear to signal a growing US concern with North Korea's rising level of rhetoric.

Besides deploying the 14 additional GBIs at Ft Greely in Alaska, Hagel said the United States will also deploy a Raytheon AN/TPY-2 radar to Japan, begin an environmental assessment of a potential GBI site in the United States, and shift resources away from the eventual deployment of Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) IIBs to Poland, as part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). That decision will result in the termination of Phase 4 of the EPAA.

That phase would have extended missile defence over the United States, but would not appear until 2022 or beyond, James Miller, under secretary of defence for policy said at the 15 March briefing.