ArmsControlWonk.com

Yesterday morning I attended a breakfast featuring General Chilton, STRATCOM commander. The one-time astronaut offered this colorful illustration for why definitional issues would make it impossible, in his judgment, to negotiate a workable treaty banning space weapons:

Let’s say you build a craft capable of pulling alongside a satellite, extending a robotic arm, and plucking the satellite’s solar panels off, thereby disabling it. Would you consider that a space weapon? Well, if so, that would mean the U.S. space shuttle is a space weapon.

I am creating a new category called “data points.”

Lieutenant General Walter L. Sharp, nominated to be Commander, United States Forces Korea, estimates the size of the North Korean missile stockpile in his answers to advance policy questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee:

North Korea continues to build missiles of increasing range, lethality and accuracy, bolstering its current stockpile of 800 missiles for its defense and external sales.

This complements a statement in 2000 by General Thomas Schwartz, then-Command USFK, during a Senate Posture Hearing with PACOM, USFK AND SOUTHCOM.

There’s about 500 Scud missiles that North Korea has that are aimed at the Republic of Korea. We also have the No Dong, about 100 missiles. And they’re now developing the Taepo Dong 1 and possibly the 2. So theater missile defense has to be and remains one of my priorities.

Those are more specific claims than one typically sees. In 2001, the National Intelligence Council stated that “North Korea has hundreds of Scuds and No Dong missiles.” [Emphasis Mine.]