North Korea’s attempted satellite launch today ended in failure, as the rocket reportedly broke up shortly after launch. There has been no official word from the North Koreans on what went wrong with the launch.
The US Navy will be relieved, however, that the satellite wasn’t a secret attack on the United States, something Admiral James Winnefeld Jr. claimed was theoretically possible in comments yesterday.
Western officials are expected to move at the UN Security Council tomorrow to punish North Korea. Though there are no indications that the satellite launch was anything but civilian in nature, UN resolutions aimed at banning missile tests made no attempt to differentiate between missiles and satellite launches.
