* Successful space shot would show ability to hit U.S.

* Launch seen as test of long-range Taepodong-2 missile

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON, April 3 (Reuters) - North Korea would demonstrate an ability to hit much of the United States with a long-range missile if it succeeds in launching a satellite in space, the former head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said on Friday.

"If they have a successful Taepodong-2 space launch shot they should be able to range most of northwestern United States, including Alaska and Hawaii, as well as part of the mainland, even with a two-stage missile," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, who ran U.S. missile-defense development until Jan. 1.

Much depends on whether Pyongyang has succeeded in developing advanced propellants for the rocket that satellite images show it is readying to launch as soon as Saturday.

South Korea and Japan have said the North's declared goal -- sending a communications satellite into orbit -- is mere cover for a test of the long-range Taepodong-2 missile.

A similar missile blew apart about 40 seconds after launch in July 2006.

If the North successfully puts a satellite in space using a three-stage missile, as many experts predict it will try to do, "they would be able to range about half of the continental United States," Obering said. "And with advanced propellants ... they could range all of the United States."

"That's one of the reasons that we have our ears up and (are) very alert -- because it's a major step forward," he told a briefing organized by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a grass-roots- and industry-funded group that backs a layered anti-missile shield the Bush administration began deploying in 2004.

The extent of North Korea's mastery of advanced rocket propellants was uncertain at the time he left the U.S. government, Obering said. "But we do know that they have demonstrated the ability to go beyond the basic SCUD-propellant technology from the 1980s."

North Korea also is estimated to have enough ingredients for at least half a dozen nuclear weapons, the U.S. Congressional Research Service said in a Feb. 12 report.

A successful space shot would show the North was "closer to gaining a capability that can be used to hold hostage a number of American cities -- and thereby in a regional crisis in the future, serve as a weapon of intimidation," said Robert Joseph, the State Department's top arms-control official during part of President George W. Bush's administration.

"When you watch North Korea ... you should be thinking of Iran," he said. "In the ballistic missile business, these two countries are tied together at the hip."

Joseph Bermudez, who analyzes North Korea's missile program for Jane's, a publisher of authoritative weapons-related reference material, said converting a space launch vehicle to deliver a warhead involved "trading out just the tip of the system."

But the production of a reliable ballistic missile warhead is "extremely difficult," he said. "You have to solve the problem of extreme vibration, rapid acceleration and deceleration as well as big swings in heating and cooling." (For full coverage of the missile crisis, click [nSP469853])

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