Daniel Inouye

Chief of US missile defense sees little progress in North Korean spaceflight program

North Korea's recent failed rocket launch shows that the communist country has made little progress in its spaceflight program, the head of the U.

S. missile defense program said Wednesday.The assessment by Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O'Reilly raises questions about the immediate threat to the United States from a North Korean long-range missile and the billions that the U.S. spends to counter it.O'Reilly testified before a Senate panel in defense of the missile defense program and the Obama administration's $7.75 billion budget request for next year. He was pressed about the failure last Friday of North Korea's Unha-3 rocket that broke apart. The North Korean government said the rocket carried an Earth observation satellite, though other countries said it was a cover for testing long-range missile technology.North Korea's Unha rocket shots in 1998, 2006 and 2009 are believed to have ended in failure."Our experience has been you need a lot of testing and flight testing in order to validate and ...

Read More ›