A Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) is launched from the Japanese AEGIS Destroyer JS Kongo enroute to an intercept of a target missile launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii on Monday. The $55 million test was a "major milestone" in growing U.S.-Japanese cooperation, said Rear Adm. Katsutoshi Kawano of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and Lt. General Henry Obering, head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. /REUTERS S.Korea Plans Affordable Missile Defense Shield The Looming Threat of N.Korea's KN-02 Missiles Japan to Conduct Intercept Missile Test Off Hawaii Korea Developing Guided Glider Bombs

Japan is building its missile defense network in close cooperation with the United States’ missile defense plan. It consists of two stages: in the first stage, SM-3 missiles like the ones just tested will be launched to intercept North Korean missiles at a high altitude; and if that fails, ground-based Patriot advanced capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles will be launched to intercept incoming missiles at a lower altitude.

South Korea, though it is closer to North Korea and in greater danger of missile attacks from the North than Japan, has almost no missile intercept system yet. The only missile defense in South Korea is a battery of 64 PAC-2 and 3 missiles deployed at a U.S. military base. Moreover, under the Kim Dae-jung administration, South Korea decided for political reasons not to join the U.S. missile defense system. The government based the decision on considerations of possible opposition from China and from some anti-American civic groups in the country.

The Defense Ministry is now developing an independent missile defense system called "Korea Air and Missile Defense" (KAMD). It will consist of a battery of PAC-3 missiles, which the ministry is to purchase after the mid-2010s, and a battery of domestically developed medium-range surface-to-air missiles (M-SAM). M-SAMs will reportedly have a shorter range than PAC-3 missiles.

Incoming missiles would be detected by Spy-1D radar from Aegis vessels such as the King Sejong-class destroyers, and by a ballistic missile early warning radar system (BMEWS). The Aegis vessels are not armed with interceptor missiles like the SM-3 the U.S. and Japan are jointly developing. But the country plans to purchase shorter-range interceptor missiles in the medium and long term. Military sources say the U.S. and Japan are spending huge amounts of money jointly developing SM-3 missiles, so there is very little chance that they will sell them to South Korea. “Given the small size of the Korean Peninsula, we'll purchase shorter-range missiles, if the U.S. ever develops them, and deploy them on the Aegis vessels,” one source said.

Experts therefore predict it will take until at least 2015 that South Korea will be able to build a full-fledged missile defense system. At the moment, the country cannot join the U.S. missile defense system, but if KAMD is built, it will be linked to the U.S. system in one way or another. If the KAMD system is to function properly, South Korea will have to rely on the U.S.’ missile early warning system, including an early warning satellite that can detect North Korea's missile launches quickly, and on the so-called battle management command, control, communication, computer and intelligence (BM/C4I) system.

(englishnews@chosun.com )