On May 9, a beaming Kim Jong Un watched his country's first sub-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) leaping out of the water after being launched from a submerged North Korean submarine. The missile, a spitting image of the Soviet era SSN6, was dubbed "Bukkeukseong 1" (Polaris 1) by the North Koreans, a thinly veiled allusion to the US first-generation SLBM of the 1960s.
The new Polaris 1 successfully breached the ocean's surface and ignited its rocket motor, probably for a brief burn to ensure that it hits the water not too far away. Reports about a North Korean SLBM program have been circulating lately and satellite photos have already revealed a static onshore test rig for the ejection of submarine-launched missiles.
Nevertheless, the May 9 test fleshed out the program from the realms of academic speculation into the limelight of world attention. No matter how one looks at it, from a pure technological perspective it was an impressive achievement that sent shock waves around the world. By right, this should also provoke some soul-searching among the habitual critics of missile defense.
Those critics love to argue that missile defense can't work, and that anyway there are no worthwhile threats to defend against. When missile defense does work, as it spectacularly did over Israel's skies last summer, critics "prove" that it really didn't, regardless of what millions of Israelis saw with their own eyes.
When rogue bullies like North Korea parade ever heavier and longer-range ballistic missiles, they dismiss them as dog and pony shows, as mockups for propaganda purposes or as obsolete Soviet-era equipment that was lifted from Russian junk yards.
Oceans of ink have been spilled to preach that their design did not make sense, that they were clumsy representations of missiles being developed, that fabricating them would require gigantic indigenous technical effort that was inconceivable because of North Korea's pitiful economy.
Patronizingly, they point out that similar US ballistic missiles represented decades of expertise in rocket motors and vast sums of intellectual, technological and financial capital, alluding that the rogues, somehow, lack the intellectual resources or huge oil income to emulate past US past feats.
According to this article of faith, there is no imminent threat to the US and its allies from the rogues' missiles, hence no need for the US to irk Russia by deploying missile defenses.
When North Korea unveiled the long-predicted Musudan/BM25 intermediate-range ballistic missile in an October 2010 parade, it was met by a chorus of skepticism from missile defense bashers. As we now know, the Musudan/BM25 is a stretched land-mobile version of the SSN6, the Soviet Union's first SLBM, which utilizes a more modern propulsion system than that of the older Scuds.
For the skeptics, though, the newly unveiled missiles rolling down Pyongyang's main thoroughfare were mockups, mere stage props crafted to force observers into believing that the Musudan was based on the SSN6. Nothing to worry about, they said, because it was more plausible to assume that North Korea was still limited to ancient Scud technology.
The thought that a rogue regime like North Korea's might eventually send nuclear ballistic missile submarines to patrol the shores of Japan and the US surely sends shudders down the spines of Western analysts. This specter might compel more investments in missile defenses everywhere. Confronted with this prospect, it would not be too surprising if the habitual skeptics rally once more to trivialize the North Korean achievement, perhaps explaining it away as a photo shop propaganda ploy or reiterating their arguments about North Korea's allegedly limited intellectual resources and its pitiful economy.
In this regard, history proves at least two fundamental things: First, that industrialized nations have no monopoly on brainpower: Rogue countries can raise educated classes of technological leaders.
Second, dictatorships can squeeze out ample resources from "pitiful economies" for regime-saving technological breakthroughs. After all, it was only five years after Alamogordo that the USSR, still in ruins from World War II, exploded its first nuclear bomb. Nine years later came Sputnik.
Mao's "Great Leap Forward," which ended in 1961, shrank China's GDP and killed millions by starvation. Yet one year later, China exploded its own nuclear bomb. Mao's disastrous "Cultural Revolution" was still raging in 1970 when China's first satellite, the Dong Feng Hong 1, was lofted to space aboard its indigenous "Long March" SLV — and so on.
Let no one draw comfort from the false notion that the rogues are somehow incompetent. The May 9 North Korean test was a clarion call that showed both competence and determination. The missiles that annually roll down Pyongyang's avenues might be geometrical representations, but the North Korean missile program is neither a mockup nor a fake. It is real, it is dangerous, and it should be defended against.
Uzi Rubin is president of the Rubincon consulting firm and founder of Israel's Missile Defense Organization.
