Obama administration now learning to love missile defense

Back in April, in advance of North Korea's last missile test, the administration pretty much pooh-poohed the threat posed by the Taepo Dong launch, characterizing Pyongyang's saber-rattling as bluster.

Indeed, from all outward indications, Team Obama did just about nothing but bloviate to defend U.S. territory and interests from the missile that, by almost all accounts, has the potential to reach the western United States.

The Pentagon even declined to put the Pacific missile-defense system (based at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.) on operational alert — precautions the Bush administration took during North Korea's 2006 Taepo Dong test.

But the April shot saw the Taepo Dong fly further than ever before — some 2,500 miles. That relative success apparently surprised and embarrassed the White House enough that it's taking a drastically different approach this time by deploying just about all of the bells and whistles in our (still limited) missile-defense arsenal.

It's a layered defense: An at-sea X-band radar will cue shooters with sensor data to engage the incoming missile.

Ground-based missiles from Greely and Vandenberg will intercept the missile in mid-flight. And if those countermissiles don't score, Navy Aegis-class destroyers at sea off Hawaii and land-based THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) systems on Hawaii will destroy the target.

It's the right thing to do, but what changed? Pretty clearly, the Obama crew got mugged by reality.

Their charm offensive toward North Korea isn't working.

Pyongyang has been as belligerent as ever, lobbing more threats, epithets and missiles in our direction than at any time in recent history.

In fact, the Kim Jong Il regime is ratcheting up tensions in an almost unprecedented manner — while it's clearly getting closer to having a nuclear-capable missile that can “reach out and touch us” in a very bad way.

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