Military's Asia Chief Sounds Spooked About North Korean Rocket Launch

North Korea is a perfect 0-for-4 in its attempts to launch rockets into space. As Pyongyang apparently prepares to try again this month, the top U.S. military officer in the Pacific is raising expectations that the fifth time might be the charm. The upside is that the U.S. will get a trove of Nork rocket data either way.

'They have progressively gained better technology over time,' Adm. Samuel Locklear, chief of the U.S. military's Pacific Command, told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday morning. 'To the degree that they will be more successful than they were last time, in such a short period of time and what they've done to correct that, I can't tell you how they assess that, but we'll have to wait and see how it goes.'

Rocket tech is not a North Korean strong suit. In April, a much-hyped rocket launch, its fourth since 1998, once again failed to launch a satellite into orbit. That has big implications for North Korea's ability to attack the United States. If the North can't break atmosphere, it can't develop a long-range ballistic missile to threaten American shores.

That's why analysts have been puzzled by North Korea's announcement that it intends another rocket launch, ostensibly to put a weather-monitoring satellite into space, just eight months after its last attempt failed. Victoria Samson, a rocket expert at the Secure World Foundation, told Danger Room on Wednesday that Pyongyang hasn't had time to make a significant technological upgrade. So it's possible Locklear portraying the impending launch as more dire than he expects so that a fifth consecutive failure will look all the more embarrassing.

Even if Locklear is trolling Pyongyang, he warned North Korea against putting him to the test. 'We encourage the leadership in North Korea to consider what they're doing here, and the implications on the security environment on the Korean peninsula,' he said. 'There are declared indications to do what they would call a peaceful satellite launch, but we believe that is still contradictory to United Nations Security Council resolutions.'

There are reports that the U.S. and its Pacific allies are taking steps to prepare for the launch. About three or four missile-defense capable ships are moving closer to the Korean Peninsula, the Associated Press reported, a move Locklear played down as routine. However the North fares at this latest rocket launch, the ships and planes near North Korea appear ready to capitalize on the data trove that will emerge in its wake.

'It should seem logical that we'll move them around so we'll have the best situational awareness,' Locklear said. 'If they do violate the Security Council [resolutions] and launch a missile, what kind is it? What is it about? Where does it go? Who does it threaten? The parts of it that don't go where they want it to go, where do they go, and what are the consequences of that?'

In other words, the U.S. might be an unexpected beneficiary of North Korea's fifth attempted rocket launch ' even if the rocket defies the odds and actually succeeds.