North Korea Demonstrates the Key Elements of an ICBM

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Riki Ellison, Chairman and Founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA), www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org, comments on the successful North Korean test.  Ellison is one of the top lay experts on missile defense in the world. His comments and observations are below:

"North Korea has successfully launched a three stage missile into space and put an estimated two hundred pound satellite into orbit, proving its technical, manufacturing and engineering prowess on multi-staging, guidance and payload separation to deliver a satellite in space and around the globe demonstrating the key critical elements of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). It is a fundamental breakthrough that has taken North Korea five major missile tests, beginning in 1998, to achieve. This is a resounding achievement for a poor depressed nation, which has been severely sanctioned by the international community, the United Nations and the United States of America continuously for more than a decade."

"North Korea will now move towards a much easier technical challenge of creating a re-entry vehicle that can withstand the heat, friction and high speeds to deliver a weapon from space through the atmosphere to detonate in the atmosphere or on the surface of the Earth. North Korea has already established and proven its re-entry vehicle technology for lower speeds of short-range missiles North Korea will also work at a much harder technical challenge to miniaturize its nuclear weapons to be placed on a future ICBM payload."

"This successful demonstration to the world by North Korea has significant ramifications to other state actors who are seeking weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them such as Iran as well as to those countries that are and will be directly threatened by North Korea. The Republic of Korea, Japan and the United States of America will be the primary recipients of North Korea's intimidation, leverage and influence to project power outside of their borders."

"This North Korean achievement that has defied the United Nations, our President and our intelligent communities to the world sets precedent and encouragement to Iran to stand strong on its national will in attaining Nuclear capability and the ballistic missile means to project it."

"It is absolutely imperative that our nation is technically ahead, with great confidence and reliability, of this North Korean threat with the means to intercept and destroy North Korean future ICBMs. Our nation's ground based missile defense system (GMD) deployed in Alaska and California, with its command and control in Colorado and its sensors across the Pacific all integrated together, is the investment we have made as a nation and we will need to continue to increase that investment to ensure our safety and defense of our citizens and homeland is as close to 100 percent as possible."

Riki Ellison is available for on the record interviews.

SOURCE Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance