Deployment of THAAD: News & Discussions

[Oldman1]

^^ Of course, a cat and mouse game. I don't doubt the Russians for one minute. If there is one thing the Russians master with perfection it is missile tech.

Then no worries, just overreaction.

 

[Basel]

Comparing apples to oranges. If we had ballistic missiles deployed in South Korea, its understandable that China would react since Beijing would be easily nuked within 3 minutes or so with little to no reaction in time. But THAAD is not going to destroy China within 3 minutes.



Big mistake on North Korea since we had an agreement to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. withdrew all nukes in 1992. And we told South Korea not to make nuclear weapons. Even refused to give them Tomahawk missiles not to disturb the region including China. But as you can see we have to respond.



Why would Russia be threaten when Russia has already claimed their new ballistic missiles can defeat the ABM system? And only a few dozen interceptors will not stop hundreds of ballistic missiles.

you want to look into Chinese Territory with THAAD in SK, will you allow long range Chinese SAM & BMD Near US border in Mexico??

 

[S10]

I think Chinese leadership should consider placing some sanction on both North and South Korea. North for their refusal to disarm their nuclear arsenal and ongoing missile test, and South for being a US pawn.

For North:
- Reduce oil and food aid to half of current level, and start demanding N. Korea pay for them instead of getting them for free.
- Place embargo on all weapon spare parts
- Deny N. Koreans work visas

For South:
- Immediate safety inspection on all LG, Samsun and Hyundai products, and prevent them from being on the market until inspection is complete.
- Cancel all tourist visas to S. Korea
- Temporary ban on food export to S. Korea
- Recall embassador
- Expel S. Koreans living illegally in China (up to a million of them)

It's time China flexes its economic muscles. THAAD is clearly targeted towards China. The excuse that it's aimed at North Korea is as funny as US deploying missile shield in Poland to deter Iranian missiles.

 

[Jlaw]

I think Chinese leadership should consider placing some sanction on both North and South Korea. North for their refusal to disarm their nuclear arsenal and ongoing missile test, and South for being a US pawn.

For North:
- Reduce oil and food aid to half of current level, and start demanding N. Korea pay for them instead of getting them for free.
- Place embargo on all weapon spare parts
- Deny N. Koreans work visas

For South:
- Immediate safety inspection on all LG, Samsun and Hyundai products, and prevent them from being on the market until inspection is complete.
- Cancel all tourist visas to S. Korea
- Temporary ban on food export to S. Korea
- Recall embassador
- Expel S. Koreans living illegally in China (up to a million of them)

It's time China flexes its economic muscles. THAAD is clearly targeted towards China. The excuse that it's aimed at North Korea is as funny as US deploying missile shield in Poland to deter Iranian missiles.

China should instigate a war between NK-SK.

 

[Oldman1]

you want to look into Chinese Territory with THAAD in SK, will you allow long range Chinese SAM & BMD Near US border in Mexico??

There are already radars that can see deep into China. Taiwan has one. Japan has one. If China wants to deploy them in Mexico, go ahead. Considering advances in ballistic missiles that can overwhelm ABM systems in numbers, and also the fact China really has nothing to fear with their ballistic missile submarines out in the sea beyond THAAD's reach.


http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-china-eastchinasea-idUSKCN0WT0QZ

Japan opens radar station close to disputed isles, drawing angry China response


Japan on Monday switched on a radar station in the East China Sea, giving it a permanent intelligence gathering post close to Taiwan and a group of islands disputed by Japan and China, drawing an angry response from Beijing.

The new Self Defence Force base on the island of Yonaguni is at the western extreme of a string of Japanese islands in the East China Sea, 150 km (90 miles) south of the disputed islands known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.

China has raised concerns with its neighbors and in the West with its assertive claim to most of the South China Sea where the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims. Japan has long been mired in a territorial dispute with China over the East China Sea islands.

"Until yesterday, there was no coastal observation unit west of the main Okinawa island. It was a vacuum we needed to fill," said Daigo Shiomitsu, a Ground Self Defence Force lieutenant colonel who commands the new base on Yonaguni.

"It means we can keep watch on territory surrounding Japan and respond to all situations."

Shiomitsu on Monday attended a ceremony at the base with 160 military personnel and around 50 dignitaries. Construction of some buildings, which feature white walls and traditional Okinawan red-tiled roofs, is still unfinished.

The 30-sq-km (11-sq-mile) island is home to 1,500 people, who mostly raise cattle and grow sugar cane. The Self Defence Force contingent and family members will increase the population by a fifth.

"This radar station is going to irritate China," said Nozomu Yoshitomi, a professor at Nihon University and a retired major general in the Self Defence Force.

In addition to being a listening post, the facility could be used a base for military operations in the region, he added.

China's defense ministry, in a statement sent to Reuters about the radar station, said the international community needed to be on high alert to Japan's military expansion.

"The Diaoyu Islands are China's inherent territory. We are resolutely opposed to any provocative behavior by Japan aimed at Chinese territory," it said.

"The activities of Chinese ships and aircraft in the relevant waters and airspace are completely appropriate and legal."

The listening post fits into a wider military build-up along the island chain, which stretches 1,400 km (870 miles) from the Japanese mainland.

Policy makers last year told Reuters it was part of a strategy to keep China at bay in the Western Pacific as Beijing gains control of the South China Sea.

Toshi Yoshihara, a U.S. Naval War College professor, said Yonaguni sits next to two potential flashpoints in Asia - Taiwan and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.

"A network of overlapping radar sites along the island chain would boost Japan's ability to monitor the East China Sea," he added.

Yonaguni is only around 100 km (62 miles) east of Taiwan, near the edge of a controversial air defense identification zone set up by China in 2013.

Over the next five years, Japan will increase its Self Defence Force in the East China Sea by about a fifth to almost 10,000 personnel, including missile batteries that will help Japan draw a defensive curtain along the island chain.

Chinese ships sailing from their eastern seaboard must pass through this barrier to reach the Western Pacific, access to which Beijing needs both as a supply line to the rest of the world's oceans and for naval power projection.

 

[anon45]

You're not at my level of geopolitical analysis

Yes I don't doubt that there are few people at your level

I'm telling you right now. Our strategic planing for SK just got more complicated.

Why would the Koreans care? Their choice was either being threatened with nuclear destruction by North Korea, or threatened with nuclear destruction by China. They picked China for obvious reasons.

 

[TaiShang]

South Korea, US to Conceal THAAD Radar Data With Japan

12:32 25.07.2016
Seoul and Washington will not share with Tokyo the data obtained via the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system to be deployed by the United States in South Korea, Yonhap reported on Monday, citing a government source.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — According to the Yonhap news agency, the remark came amid speculations that THAAD could be integrated into a broader air defense system operated jointly by Washington and Tokyo.

"The information detected by the THAAD radar won't be going to Tokyo," the source said, as quoted by the media.

© AFP 2016/ JUNG YEON-JE
Why South Koreans’ THAAD Radiation Fears Are ‘Fully Justified’

Another source told the news agency that the exchange of information on an incoming missile at the terminal phase of flight would not be effective.

On July 8, Washington and Seoul announced that the two countries had reached an agreement to deploy the THAAD in South Korea. The THAAD system is designed to intercept short, medium and intermediate ballistic missiles at the terminal incoming stage. The system's potential deployment on the Korean Peninsula has caused concern in North Korea, as well as China and Russia.

 

[TaiShang]

Hot-headed Seoul skating on thin ice with THAAD plan
(Xinhua) 08:12, August 03, 2016

BEIJING, Aug. 2 -- The controversial deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on the Korean Peninsula is increasing concerns in neighboring China where some worry that a new Cold War is looming.

But make no mistake. It is not fear of the U.S. anti-missile shield that drives such concerns, for China has never, and will never, accepted threats that encroach on its national security.

The Republic of Korea (ROK) last month announced plans for a THAAD battery to be deployed in Seongju county, 300 km southeast of Seoul, by the end of next year.

Washington claims that THAAD can help defend the ROK against potential security threats from its neighbor, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

But the missile shield is designed to intercept incoming inter-continental ballistic missiles at relatively high altitudes, whereas the DPRK needs only short-range rockets and conventional arms to launch attacks on its southern neighbor. This alone renders THAAD a completely ineffective deterrent.

Furthermore, THAAD has a 200 km-range for intercepting missiles, yet it is to be set up 300 km southeast of Seoul, far from the DPRK border. This means the capital and its surrounding areas, the country's most populous region, will not be protected.

Again, this clearly shows that there is a hidden agenda behind THAAD, an installation that barely covers Seoul, but extends its reach to China and Russia's Far East.

With its X band radar, commanding surveillance of an area that extends over 1,200 miles from the peninsula, THAAD can be used to collect the radar data of warheads and decoys of China and Russia's strategic missiles by monitoring their experiments, thus enabling the United States to neutralize China and Russia's nuclear deterrents and put their national security at risk.

This muscle flexing, marked by strings being pulled from Washington where the fallacy of a fictional China threat has been trumpeted for years, is now bringing real, strategic threats to China's doorstep.

However, those who wish to scare China will be deeply disappointed, for China has never, nor will ever, bowed down in the face of external security threats.

By deploying this weapons system, which far exceeds the Korean Peninsula's defense needs, the ROK is skating on very thin ice by aiding the United States in compromising China's legitimate security interests. It is also destabilizing the strategic balance as well the stability of the region, which it claims that it set out to maintain in the first place.

Seoul should wake up and realize that China has never been a source of regional tension and instability, and its neighborly diplomatic philosophy of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, should not warrant schemes that undermine the country's national security.

Seoul should also realize that it is amity and goodwill between neighbors, rather than a handful of high-tech weapons, that constitutes the true shield of regional peace and stability.

 

[xunzi]

If nuclear exchange happen, seoul will be nuke. It's that plain simple.

 

[cirr]

No more "Hanliu" pls.

 

[gambit]

And China does nothing about NKR.

 

[Oldman1]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-k...threats-over-u-s-thaad-missile-system-n606946

North Korea Makes Threats Over U.S. THAAD Missile System
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea made more threats against its enemies Monday, vowing to take unspecified "powerful" measures over a U.S. plan to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea.

The North Korean military statement was filled with the belligerent, over-the-top rhetoric common when Pyongyang sees an external threat. A direct military attack from Pyongyang's large but impoverished military, which would probably finish the country's authoritarian leadership after U.S. and South Korean retaliation, is highly unlikely.

North Korea favors covert, surprise attacks such as the 2010 shelling of a South Korean island that killed four people, and Seoul has accused it of conducting a slew of cyberattacks.

The North's most recent threat, carried in state media, came three days after Seoul and Washington said they were close to determining a location in South Korea for the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system to better deal with North Korean threats.

The North said it will take an unspecified "physical counter-action" as soon as the THAAD location is announced. The statement also carried one of the North's favorite, oft-repeated threats: To turn Seoul into a "sea of fire." It has regularly warned it would do that since 1994. U.S. and South Korean officials say THAAD only targets North Korea, but China and Russia suspect it could also help U.S. radars detect their own missiles.

 

[S10]

And China does nothing about NKR.

We don't want North Korea refugees flooding our borders.

 

[Oldman1]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/02/asia/north-korea-missile/

North Korea fires ballistic missile, South Korea says

Seoul (CNN)North Korea fired a ballistic missile around 7:50 a.m. Wednesday, according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The missile was launched from an area in North Korea's South Hwanghae province, in the country's southwest.
It then flew about 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) across the peninsula into the sea in the east.
An official with the South Korean Defense Ministry told CNN that it is assumed a Rodong missile was fired.
North Korea, by firing of ballistic missile which can equip nuclear warhead, is openly showing its direct and obvious intention of provocation and ambition that it can target our country, including our ports and airports, as well as neighbor countries," the official said.
North Korea is prohibited from carrying out such missile launches under a March U.N. Security Council resolution.
"North Korea, whose provocative acts are threatening the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and the international community, will be faced with more powerful and thorough sanctions and pressure from the international community and our country."
However, U.S. Strategic Command issued a statement saying it detected what it believes was the simultaneous launch of two presumed No Dong intermediate range ballistic missiles.
The missiles were fired from the western city of Hwangju -- one exploded after launch and the other tracked over North Korea and into the Sea of Japan, STRATCOM said.

 

[Kyle Sun]

I am some kind of understanding South Korea.

They have no choice.