Should the United States have preempted North Korea's July 4th test launch of a Taepodong 2 ICBM? Its supposed 3500+ mile range would be enough to hit vital parts of America's homeland. Some academics and former Department of Defense officials did publicly urge preemption using a cruise missile fired from a submerged U.S. Navy submarine. My own feeling throughout this mini-crisis was different: By no means interfere physically with the missile. An attack against it would constitute a blatant act of war. Far better to let North Korea launch the Taepodong 2, because priceless intel could be gained if they did. That intelligence would be gathered by the same sub (or subs) that might have fired a Tomahawk or two at the pad with the rocket set up and fueled.

On the other hand, to have leveraged North Korea diplomatically and economically into defueling the missile and returning it to storage would only delay the inevitable, since Kim Jong Il's enigmatic regime could always roll it out again at an optimal time of their own choosing -- yanking everyone's chain all over again. (North Korea has a nasty record of violating important moratoriums they've already agreed to.) Plus, putting that missile back in the barn would have left the U.S. without much data about the missile itself. Said data might be vital to promptly assessing the level of danger the Taepodong 2 actually poses to American interests, and it might also prove indispensable to developing effective defenses against a future operational (nuclear armed) version of the ICBM.

We've dealt with these technical challenges before. Back in the Soviet era, one major purpose of America's submarine force was to spy up close on USSR cruise missile and ballistic missile tests held near or over the sea. It's standard international practice for such tests to use heavily instrumented versions devoid of live warheads, which instead radio performance information in real time for detailed study by engineers and scientists. Such Soviet telemetry data, even if encrypted, was often intercepted and recorded by our subs while lurking on station. The data was then decoded by the NSA, and analyzed for all it was worth to better understand the threats presented and to help develop effective deterrents and possible passive, kinetic, and electronic countermeasures. Furthermore, whenever the Kremlin conducted its tests, bits and pieces of the weapon -- if not the entire missile body -- would fall into the sea in either deep or shallow water. Our silent service had many successes covertly salvaging these items off the ocean floor. The parts they snatched and brought home provided even better clues about enemy weapon design, materials used, capabilities, and weaknesses.

Such stealthy intelligence gathering by U.S. Navy nuclear submarines continues today, with quieter and more versatile subs, and ever-improved devices for locating and retrieving objects of interest from the seabed -- in both littoral and deep-ocean environments. In some instances U.S. Navy SEALs and/or specially trained Navy divers deploy from the sub to assist in this work. The fact that the Taepodong 2 crashed in the western Sea of Japan only 42 seconds into its flight, (either because of a mechanical failure or a self-destruct order from North Korean range safety officials), creates a potential intel treasure trove, which our super subs of today are ideally suited to harvest, even in the face of (rather primitive) North Korean anti-submarine efforts.

Is this mere speculation on my part? No. Readers wanting a “been there, done that” first-hand account of such missions during the Cold War should read The Silent War by John Craven, Ph.D., former Chief Scientist of the U.S. Navy's Special Projects Office. You'll be very impressed. Practicing submariners have suggested in the past few months that civilians ought to “use their imagination” and “draw inferences from unclassified info” to build a mental picture of the sub force's contributions during the Global War on Terror and simultaneous WMD counter-proliferation efforts worldwide. At the Naval Submarine League's 2006 Open Symposium in Alexandria, VA, in early June, an active duty flag officer (admiral) described how Navy SEALs can go ashore and plant a widespread grid of small signals eavesdropping devices, which relay their intercepts across and beyond any intervening mountains to special antennas on nuclear subs out at sea. At the Naval War College's Current Strategy Forum in Newport, RI, one week later, a different flag officer stated very pointedly that we know a lot more about Iran's mislabeled “next-generation” rocket torpedo than anyone in Tehran realizes. It's thus reasonable to conjecture that an American sub was nearby for the recent demonstration of that weapon. One wonders after the admiral's remarks if, beyond detailed radio and sonar recordings, divers or a wire-guided sled/grapnel bought back a spent test article that's already being dissected in a U.S. lab somewhere.

For those who warn that North Korean weaponeers will learn lessons from the ICBM's failure and eventually perfect the multi-stage missile, I would retort as follows: Our own very seasoned weaponeers can learn lessons much faster, and go on to perfect some type of workable missile defense on an invaluably expedited timetable -- if they indeed receive the rich information and weapon parts which today's all-too-unsung submariners are uniquely equipped to provide.