U.S. says North Korea satellite tumbling in orbit again

PanARMENIAN.Net - North Korea’s recently launched satellite is once again tumbling in orbit, after stabilizing briefly, Reuters reports citing a U.S. official and other sources.

The satellite update came as a key congressional watchdog agency said the U.S. military had not demonstrated its ability to protect the United States against a possible North Korea missile attack.

Earlier this month North Korea launched what it said was an earth observation satellite but what the country's neighbors and the United States called a missile test. It was earlier believed to have achieved stable orbit but not to have transmitted data back to Earth.

The U.S. official, and two other sources with knowledge of the issue, said they are less concerned about the function of the satellite than with the technology involved in launching it. They added that the launch was clearly intended to demonstrate North Korea’s ability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the research arm of Congress, highlighted concerns about missile attacks from North Korea in a recent report.

“GMD flight testing, to date, was insufficient to demonstrate that an operationally useful defense capability exists,” the GAO said. GMD is an acronym for a ground-based missile defense system, Reuters says.

The report said that the missile defense system, or the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, had only demonstrated “a partial capability against small numbers of simple ballistic missile threats.”