Pentagon looking at West Coast sites for missile defense


Following an ICBM test by North Korea last Wednesday, the Pentagon agency responsible for defending the US against a missile attack is carrying out a survey of West Coast sites for potential missile defense.

Congressman Mike Rogers, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and chairs the Strategic Forces Subcommittee which oversees missile defense, said the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), was aiming to install extra defenses at West Coast sites. The funding for the system does not appear in the 2018 defense budget plan indicating potential deployment is further off.
“It’s just a matter of the location, and the MDA making a recommendation as to which site meets their criteria for location, but also the environmental impact,” the Alabama Congressman and Republican told Reuters during an interview on the sidelines of the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in southern California.

It only takes a couple of weeks to install THAAD and I'm sure they could find funding for the sites in a hurry if they had to. But more importantly, the search for new missile defense sites shows that the government has reached a conclusion that North Korean missiles now have the range to hit the US mainland.
That last North Korean missile test reached an altitude of more than 2000 miles and landed 600 miles downrange. Experts believe that if launched on the right trajectory, the missile would be able to hit most of the US. 
The window to stop North Korea from being able to launch a nuclear armed ICBM at the US is closing fast. The choice facing the president is grave; negotiate and eventually allow a nuclear North Korea to exist or go to war to prevent that prospect. 
I don't think Trump will choose the former.







Just days after Pyongyang launched its most advanced ICBM, one which experts warned has the potential to hit a target anywhere on the territory of the United States, North Korea said the U.S. is “begging” for a nuclear war by planning the “largest-ever” joint aerial drill with South Korea just after concluding an exercise with nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, Bloomberg reported.
“Should the Korean peninsula and the world be embroiled in the crucible of nuclear war because of the reckless nuclear war mania of the U.S., the U.S. will have to accept full responsibility for it,” North Korea’s state-run KCNA said Saturday, citing a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The statement came after Yonhap News reported that six U.S. Raptor stealth fighters planes arrived in South Korea on Saturday for a joint air drill named "Vigilant Ace 18" scheduled for Dec. 4 to 8. The F-22s flew into South Korea together in a show of force. The stealth fighters, however, were just a small part of the upcoming show of force: according to local media, some 230 aircraft and up to 16,000 soldiers and airmen are taking part in the drill, which is one of the biggest ever of its kind. 
As part of "Vigilant Ace", US and South Korean forces will be rehearsing for a full-scale war with North Korea, with Yonhap noting that "allies plan to stage simulated attacks on mock North Korean nuclear and missile targets."
Despite Pyongyang's harsh rhetoric, US commanders have downplayed the drill – claiming it is “regular” and not a direct response to North Korea.
According to the WSJ, at least 230 US and Southg Korean warplanes will take part, alongside 12,000 US troops from the Air Force, Marines and Navy and airmen with another 4,000 expected to represent Seoul." The drill, which lasts from December 4 until December 8, will see aircraft flying over eight airbases in across the Korean Peninsula.

In reality, it will likely provoke North Korea into yet another ICBM launch.  To be sure, while the Kim regime traditionally rages over the drills on its border, claiming they are rehearsals for invasion, although it may well be right: US forces have been flooding into the Pacific this year with warships, warplanes, missiles and the army all on standby.
Vigilant Ace comes after Donald Trump warned he would “take care” of North Korea following the missile test.
Meanwhile, showing no signs of de-escalation, North Korea has tested dozens of missiles this year, and claimed its nukes can now hit the US. Kim is also feared to be readying the dreaded Juche Bird missile – a live nuke fired out into the heart of the Pacific.








Tensions on the Korean Peninsula reached fever pitch over the weekend with the arrival of six US F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets in South Korea on Saturday for joint military drills.
The deployment of the fighter jets to the region comes days after Pyongyang launched a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile reportedly capable of traveling some 8000 miles and reaching Washington DC. Military experts say chances of war are growing at an exponential rate, with both US and North Korean authorities throwing gasoline into the fire.
On Saturday, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) said in a written statement that US President Donald Trump and his administration were "begging for nuclear war" by "staging an extremely dangerous nuclear gamble on the Korean peninsula."

The DPRK spokesman described Trump as a "nuclear demon" and a "disruptor of global peace."

On Sunday, Pyongyang's Rodong Sinmun newspaper, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), called the US-South Korea Vigilant Ace 18 joint air exercises scheduled for Monday to Friday a "dangerous provocation" pushing the region "to the brink of a nuclear war."









At a conference on women’s entrepreneurship, held in Ankara on November 9 and hosted by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rejected the concept of “moderate Islam”. Referring to the vow by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — during the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh on Oct. 25 — to turn his country into a bastion of “moderate Islam,” Erdoğan said, “Islam cannot be either ‘moderate’ or ‘not moderate.’ Islam can only be one thing.” He also claimed that the “patent of this concept originated in the West,” which “really want[s] to weaken Islam.”
Erdoğan has consistently communicated his thoughts about the term “moderate Islam” often used in the West to describe his Justice and Development Party (AKP). As early as 2007, he said: “These epithets of ‘moderate Islam’ are very ugly, it is disrespectful and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”
In keeping with Erdoğan’s assertions, the Turkish government-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) published in July a detailed 140-page report, which stated that Islam is “superior” to Judaism and Christianity, and that “interfaith dialogue is unacceptable.”