Ng Han Guan / AP, file
In
this photo taken on April 15, 2012, what appears to be a new missile is
carried during a mass military parade at the Kim Il Sung Square in
Pyongyang, North Korea. The photo shows the warhead's surface is
undulated, suggesting it's a thin metal sheet unable to withstand flight
pressure, analysts say.
The Associated Press reports —
Analysts
who have studied photos of a half-dozen ominous new North Korean
missiles showcased recently at a lavish military parade say they were
fakes, and not very convincing ones, casting further doubt on the country's claims of military prowess.
Since its recent rocket launch failure, Pyongyang's top military leaders
have made several boastful statements about its weapons capabilities.
On Wednesday, Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho claimed his country is capable of
defeating the United States "at a single blow." And on Monday,
North Korea promised "special actions" that would reduce Seoul's government to ashes within minutes.
The
weapons displayed April 15 appear to be a mishmash of liquid-fuel and
solid-fuel components that could never fly together. Undulating casings
on the missiles suggest the metal is too thin to withstand flight.
Each missile was slightly different from the others, even though all
were supposedly the same make. They don't even fit the launchers they
were carried on.
Ng Han Guan / AP, file
Adding
more doubt to North Korea's claims of military prowess after its
flamboyant rocket launch failure, analysts say the half dozen missiles
showcased at the military parade were low-quality fakes.
"There
is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups," Markus Schiller and
Robert Schmucker, of Germany's Schmucker Technologie, wrote in a paper
posted recently on the website
Armscontrolwonk.com
that listed those discrepancies. "It remains unknown if they were
designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers
simply did some sloppy work."
The missiles, called KN-08s, were loaded onto the largest mobile
launch vehicles North Korea has ever unveiled. Pyongyang gave them
special prominence by presenting them at the end of the parade, which
capped weeks of celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the
country's founding father, Kim Il Sung.
David Guttenfelder / AP, file
North
Korean civilians, some weeping, wave flowers as they look up at Kim
Jong Un, unseen, at the end of the military parade on April 15, 2012.
Richard Engel, NBC's chief foreign correspondent, shares a rare and revealing look inside the reclusive kingdom of North Korea.
Launch slideshow
The unveiling created an international stir. The missiles appeared to be new, and designed for long-range attacks.
That's a big concern because, along with developing nuclear weapons,
North Korea has long been suspected of trying to field an
intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, capable of reaching the
United States.
Washington contends that North Korea's failed April 13 rocket launch
was an attempt to test missile technology rather than the scientific
mission Pyongyang claims.
But after poring over close-up photos of the missiles, Schiller and
Schmucker, whose company has advised NATO on missile issues, argue the
mock-ups indicate North Korea is a long way from having a credible ICBM.
"There is still no evidence that North Korea actually has a
functional ICBM," they concluded, adding that the display was a "dog and
pony show" and suggesting North Korea may not be making serious
progress toward its nuclear-tipped ICBM dreams.
North Korea has a particularly bad track record with ICBM-style
rockets. Its four launches since 1998 - three of which it claimed
carried satellites - have all ended in failure.
Though North Korea frequently overstates its military capabilities,
the missiles displayed this month might foreshadow weapons it is still
working on.
David Wright, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists who
has written extensively about North Korea's missile program, said he
believes the KN-08s could be "somewhat clumsy representations of a
missile that is being developed."
Wright noted that the first signs the outside world got of North
Korea's long-range Taepodong-2 missile - upon which the recent failed
rocket was based - was from mock-ups seen in 1994, 12 years before it
was actually tested on the launch pad.
"To understand whether there is a real missile
development program
in place, we are trying to understand whether the mock-ups make sense
as the design for a real missile," he said. "It is not clear that it has
a long enough range to make sense for North Korea to invest a lot of
effort in."
Theodore Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
and former scientific adviser to the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations,
said the Taepodong-2 design remains the more real future threat - though
even that remains at least a decade away - and the KN-08 is simply a
smoke screen.
"I believe that these missiles are not only mock-ups, but they are
very unlikely to be actual mock-ups of any missiles in design," he said.
"Fabricating a missile like the KN-08 would require a gigantic
indigenous technical effort. ... The only way North Korea could develop
such a missile with its pitiful economy would be if someone gave it to
them."
He noted that a comparable U.S. missile, the Minuteman III, required
"decades of expertise in rocket motors, and vast sums of intellectual,
technological and financial capital."
Much attention, meanwhile, has been given to the 16-wheel mobile
launchers that carried the missiles during the parade, which experts
believe may have included a chassis built in China. That raises
questions of whether China has violated U.N. sanctions against selling
missile-related technology to Pyongyang.
Some missile experts say the launchers were designed to carry a
larger missile than the 18-meter-long KN-08, and argue that North Korea
would not have spent millions of dollars on them unless it has, or
intends to have, a big missile to put on them.
But Wright said the launchers, like the missiles they carried, could also have been more for show than anything else.
"Given the international attention it has gotten from parading these
missiles you could argue that the cost of buying the large trucks -
which add a lot of credibility to the images of the missiles - was money
well spent in terms of projecting an image of power," he said.
(This version CORRECTS spelling in paragraph 8 to "poring")
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