A pair of US Navy destroyers have arrived in South Korea to participate in the Key Resolve/Foal Eagle exercise, but could be used to also shoot down a North Korean missile:

Loaded with missiles capable of intercepting a flying rocket, a pair of argus-eyed U.S. destroyers glided into a South Korean port this week along the east coast where North Korea appears determined to launch what it calls a space satellite.

The USS Chafee and the USS Stetham, docked at Donghae Harbor about 130 kilometers south of the intensely guarded inter-Korean border, are among at least six U.S. warships deployed around South Korea as part of the 12-day joint defense exercise that began Monday.

   North Korea blasts the annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercise as a full-scale war preparation, threatening to retaliate if the allies intrude even a fraction of a centimeter into its territory.

   The routine denouncement came as the communist state has taken measured steps over weeks to launch what it claims to be a communications satellite as part of its space development project.

   On Thursday, the North said that it has notified international agencies of its intention to soon go ahead with the launch from a site along its northeastern shore.

   “We would know if it’s a satellite or a missile,” Commander Choi Hee-dong, chief of the Aegis-guided USS Chafee, said Thursday in an interview with Yonhap News Agency.

   Showing a set of radars designed to tell a bird from a rocket, Choi, an ethnic Korean, said his vessel is carrying nearly 100 torpedoes and missiles.

   He declined to specify models, but experts say the destroyer normally carries state-of-the-art SM-3 missile interceptors and Tomahawks that could strike a target as small as a window of a building hundreds of kilometers away.

The arrival of what Choi described as the most potent U.S. destroyer came amid mounting speculation that the U.S. and Japan might attempt an interception should North Korea launch what could be a missile technically capable of reaching Alasaka.

   Choi stressed the deployment of his 9,200-ton vessel is strictly for the drill, but indicated a contingency such as a missile launch could force “a subtle change of plan” during the exercise.  [Yonhap]