South Korean Aegis Ships Were Ordered Not to Sail to Track North Korean Missile Launches

The real question is if the ROK military had early warning of an impending missile launch and were told by the Blue House to not deploy the Aegis ships to track the launches for fear of upsetting North Korea? With that said another possibility could be that the ROK military did not need the radar data because they were already getting it from their land based Green Pine radars:

South Korea’s key warships assigned to detecting North Korea’s missile launches have failed to detect and track them on five occasions this year.

According to Navy data obtained by Liberty Korea Party lawmaker Chong Jong-sup on Thursday, Aegis vessels failed to detect and track North Korea’s ballistic missile launches on May 4 and 9, July 25, Aug. 2, and Sept. 10. 

The North has launched new missiles or projectiles from multiple rocket launchers on a total of 11 occasions since May 4.

“No sailing orders were given to the Aegis vessels from the Joint Chiefs of Staff headquarters to monitor North Korea’s missile activities on time,” the Navy said. 

“Even if sailing orders had been given, the missile activities were out of Aegis radar range in some cases” or “it was possible to detect and track only one out of every two missiles, because the combat readiness system update was often delayed on the Aegis ships.”

Chosun Ilbo

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