Rumsfeld: Rogue State has Test-Launched Ship-Based Missile
During a press conference held in Russia during his visit there, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated that a “rogue state” had successfully tested the shipboard launch of a ballistic missile. “A weapon of mass destruction can be delivered over intercontinental range by a ballistic missile that has less than intercontinental range,” said Rumsfeld. One technique “is to put it on a ship, peel back the cover, use a transporter-erector-launcher, and fire it from a distance shorter than ICBM range. That has been done.”
Rumsfeld did not elaborate, commenting: “I’m calculating in my mind what is classified and what is not.”
But he was quite clear that “a rogue state has done that… They have fired a ballistic missile from a ship simply by peeling back the top, erecting it, firing it off, launching it a good distance, and covering it back up and moving the ship away.”
Rumsfeld also responded to a journalist’s question about chemical or biological missile warheads that, “Yes, there is proof that rogue states have demonstrated the use of chemical weapons on ballistic missiles.”
Rumsfeld did not identify what countries were involved in these programs, but noted that within the admittedly “imperfect phrase” ‘rogue states’, “certainly you would include in that category North Korea and Iraq and Iran and Libya—and North Korea.”
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» October 24, 2002: Wolfowitz too speaks of ship launched missile threat
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