The three-star admiral who heads America’s missile defense program said despite last month’s successful test against a mock North Korean warhead, U.S. missile defense technology is not yet mature.
“We are not there yet,” Vice Adm. Jim Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told a House subcommittee Wednesday.
Syring testified that the U.S. is racing to stay ahead of the threat posed by North Korea, which continues to test and improve its nuclear weapon and missile capabilities.
“I would not say we are comfortably ahead of the threat, I would say we are addressing the threat that we know today,” Syring said. “It is incumbent upon us to assume that North Korea today can range the Unites States with an ICBM carrying a nuclear warhead. Everything we are doing plans for that contingency.”
Syring said the performance of the Ground-Based Midcourse system’s radars and interceptors have improved dramatically over the past six years, and that the May 30 test was the most realistic to date.
“The scenario we conducted was actually an exact replica of the scenario that this country would face if North Korea were to fire a ballistic missile against the United States,” he said.
Syring said the trajectory of the target was exactly the same as a missile fired from the Korean peninsula, and that in a real world attack, the U.S. would fire multiple interceptors to increase the chance of destroying the incoming warhead in space.
“What message it sends to North Korea I have no idea, but I know what message it sends to the American people, that we can defend them 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said.
