Rumsfeld on Ship Launched Missile Threat
September 16, 2002 :: Department of Defense :: News
On September 16, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, gave a press briefing, at which Rumsfeld forcefully underlined the capability, already possessed by such countries as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, to deliver ballistic missiles against the United States. An excerpt from the press conference:
Question: “…as far as we know, Saddam Hussein does not have a delivery system of carrying weapons of mass destruction to CONUS—to the shores of the United States—no ICBMs that can reach us, as far as we know. And yet intelligence sources say that North Korea will have missiles capable of hitting Alaska in 2004 and, with a smaller warhead, the West Coast of the United States. Militarily, could not a case be made that North Korea poses a greater threat to the United States than Iraq does? …
Rumsfeld: “…September 11th suggested lots of ways to deliver lethal damage to the United States.
In addition, countries have placed ballistic missiles in ships—cargo ships, commercial ships, dime a dozen—all over the world. Any given time, there’s any number off our coast, coming, going, on transporter-erector-launchers, and they simply erect it, fire off a ballistic missile, put it down, cover it up. Their radar signature’s not any different than other 50 others in close proximity. So your comment that they don’t have the ability to deliver a ballistic missile to this country is flat wrong.
(Article, Link)
» More stories on: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Proliferation, Ship-Launched Threat
National Intelligence Estimate on the Foreign Ballistic Missile Threat
January 9, 2002 :: CIA :: News
The National Intelligence Council released the latest report on Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015. The report concludes that the missile threat to the United States has increased since 1999 and that any future analyses of the missile threat must also include the threat posed by rogue nations and terrorist groups. (Article, Link)
» More stories on: Analysis, China, India, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, Proliferation
Rumsfeld: Rogue State has Test-Launched Ship-Based Missile
October 21, 2001 :: Department of Defense :: News
During a press conference held in Russia during his visit there, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that a “rogue state” had successfully tested the shipboard launch of a ballistic missile. “A weapon of mass destruction can be delivered over intercontinental range by a ballistic missile that has less than intercontinental range,” said Rumsfeld. One technique “is to put it on a ship, peel back the cover, use a transporter-erector-launcher, and fire it from a distance shorter than ICBM range. That has been done.”
Rumsfeld did not elaborate, commenting: “I’m calculating in my mind what is classified and what is not.”
But he was quite clear that “a rogue state has done that… They have fired a ballistic missile from a ship simply by peeling back the top, erecting it, firing it off, launching it a good distance, and covering it back up and moving the ship away.”
Rumsfeld also responded to a journalist’s question about chemical or biological missile warheads that, “Yes, there is proof that rogue states have demonstrated the use of chemical weapons on ballistic missiles.”
Rumsfeld did not identify what countries were involved in these programs, but noted that within the admittedly “imperfect phrase” ‘rogue states’, “certainly you would include in that category North Korea and Iraq and Iran and Libya—and North Korea.” (More »»»)
» October 24, 2002: Wolfowitz too speaks of ship launched missile threat
» More stories on: Iran, Libya, North Korea, Proliferation, Ship-Launched Threat, Testing - Foreign
