North Korea's barrage of missiles this week was a vivid illustration of how tracking and intercepting waves of missiles at different altitudes and trajectories is a complex task - even in peacetime.
The challenge was evident in conflicting and sometime contradictory details released by South Korea and Japan about the launches. Early Thursday, the Japanese government said a North Korean missile had flown over its territory, but hours later said it had not.
There is a difference between providing the public with a rundown of a missile's flight, and real-time data the military uses for missile defence, the former official said. "The U.S. will always have a better view of these events than Seoul or Tokyo, who rely on a range of surface and sea-based sensors to track missiles," he said of missile tests.
The former U.S. defence official said South Korean and U.S. systems are still closely combined, however. The United States, South Korea and Japan participated in a ballistic missile defence exercise off Hawaii's coast in August - the first since 2017. North Korea also claims to be developing a new type of "hypersonic missile", which relies on high speed as well as manoeuvrability to avoid interception.
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