Amongst the dross and hysteria about Japan “preparing to intercept” his month’s North Korean “missile” with PAC-3 or SM-3 the WSJ has just printed something sensible about the upcoming Eunha-3 launch of the DPRK’s third satellite, Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3.

(I particularly like the picture used in this AP picture, with the use of the green camouflage on the PAC-3 batteries to help protect them from the evil commies, while the batteries are surrounded the cherry blossom and slate gray blocks of flats they can’t protect against a “missile” that’s not going to come within a 1,000 kilometers of them.)

This follows another excellent piece in Businessweek, NKorea launch an intel opportunity for US, allies, which features the excellent Narushige Michishita and Hiroyasu Akutsu.

In Japan Readies Response to Pyongyang’s Launch the WSJ finally places at least one correct caveat in the story that anybody who has any basic understanding of the launch and Japan’s BMD technology would know instantly:

This time, North Korea says it will launch in a southerly, not an easterly, direction. That means the rocket is expected to pass high over Okinawan islands in the East China Sea, an area that has become a security concern for Tokyo amid disputes with China and worries over that country’s increasing military profile.

At last WSJ and BW are getting closer to the real story… Japan and the U.S. have known about this launch since December and the story is win-win-win for everyone, the DPRK, the media, who are getting a good story despite the fact that most hacks have just become (willing or unwitting) cyphers, politicians and Japan’s BMD spending. DPRK is good for one thing- stimulating Japan’s defense!

Remember that SM-3 is designed to shoot down an IRBM in orbit  (at the moment one might be about it, on a good day) in space and so far it has been achieving success in carefully coordinated and choreographed tests. PAC-3 is designed as a terminal phase descent against a high speed missile, not against tumbling slow moving small bit of rocket debris. In the billions-or trillions-to-one chances that a rocket casing or  chunk of something manages somehow to get on a trajectory to hit a tiny island such as Miyakojima, neither SM-3 or PAC-3 are going to be much use. But don’t let reality impinge on a  good story!

It’s a pity the WSJ befuddles the implications of their statement that the rocket is going to come nowhere near Japan, that somehow the Eunha-3, the DPRK by suggesting the  emerging naval arms race between China and Japan over the East China Sea has anything to do with our little North Korean rocket. That’s also besides the point that if something does go suddenly seriously wrong with the rocket, Japan’s two-tiered BMD system probably can’t do anything with it anyway.

But without the implication of threat and controversy, there isn’t much of a story  saying something like, erm, “Japan prepares training exercise for some Aegis cruisers to track North Korean satellite launch.”

The article then contains an interesting interpretation of facts and motives as told by Defense Minister Tanaka:

On Friday, Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka told reporters that nothing unusual should be read into the southern deployment. “It’s not related to a strengthening of our defense structure,” he said. “It’s just in case.”

That’s a new one!

PAC-3 has long been planned as part of the MOD’s latest Mid-Term Defense Plan precisely to send a message to China, as MOD told me March 13, well before before the “story broke” about the upcoming launch, that PAC-3 was  deployed to Okinawa anyway.

Then the article quotes a local analyst who has a take on things that is something nearer what all this is all about:

“The Ministry of Defense and the Self-Defense Forces must be thankful to Pyongyang for providing a chance for training under such real circumstances,” said Tetsuo Maeda, a Japanese military analyst.

Since Japan and the U.S. have known about the launch  since December, the “news” by the media which in the case of knowledgeable Japanese journalists amounts to a clear case of deliberately whipping up the froth to make it a good story, and for “foreign correspondents” based here to roll out a bunch of nonsense about the whole thing.

As I said in my original article, this latest Taepondon Trigger is an excellent chance for Japan to get training in and ramp the threat up so as to loosen up budget for more BMD after 2015.

In fact both North Korea and Japan and the U.S. have a lot to gain by the launch. As I originally wrote a month or so ago, succeed or fail, the launch will be a valuable propaganda victory for the military and political junta backing Kim Jong-il , and it will be both an intelligence bonanza and is already proving a valuable fear creation scenario to help Japan strengthen its defenses.