North Korea Parades Hybrid 'Frankenmissile', Then Fails Yet Another Missile Launch Test (cnn.com)

First, an anonymous reader quotes Inverse: On Saturday, the North Korean military paraded an unprecedented array of weapons through Kim Il-sung Square in the center of Pyongyang... "We're totally floored right now," Dave Schmerler of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, tells the Wall Street Journal. "I was not expecting to see this many new missile designs." Schmerler tells The Journal that the large missiles -- the "frankenmissiles," as he calls them -- in the parade appear to be hybrids of the North Korean KN-08 and KN-14 missiles, both of which are ICBMs.
But at least one arms control expert noted that while the parade included ICBM-sized canisters, "what's inside is anyone's guess" -- and there's still mixed results for the country's missile program. "An attempted missile launch by North Korea on Sunday failed, US and South Korean defense officials told CNN... At this point, US military officials don't believe the missile had intercontinental capabilities, a US defense official told CNN." The official said there was limited data -- because the missile blew up so quickly -- prompting CNN.com to run the story under the headline "Show of Strength a Flop."

Update: Slashdot reader Dan Drollette is a science writer/editor and foreign correspondent for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and contacted us earlier today to share his recently-published analysis "to delve into what has been happening lately...and to discredit some common tropes in the media, such as the idea that 'North Korea is about to collapse,' 'China has a lot of influence over North Korea,' 'North Korea can credibly threaten the United States right now,' 'North Korea has no reason to feel threatened,' or 'The North can be completely denuclearized.'"

Comments

NK *is* a credible threat

[fyngyrz]

North Korea is a credible threat because they have SLBM's (Submarine-Launched-Ballistic-Missiles.) They can get very close - they don't need the kind of range an ICMB design provides.

That, and their glorious leader regularly displays both extreme aggression and extremely small-minded decision-making.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[fyngyrz]

Your (completely uncalled for) optimism about NK's 70 or so subs is noted.

Brown water... I would only point out that in WWII, the Japanese managed to build subs that could reach the US coast. Assuming some NK hardware is not at least as capable is absurd.

Assuming a sub can't get out from under surveillance may also be uncalled for. Hard to say without going into classified details. In any case, the fact that they have the hardware that can deliver the weapons means that they present a credible threat, whether we can stop them from doing so or not.

And Trump... well, I am not filled with confidence that Trump is a "thoughtful" person either.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[SuricouRaven]

North Korea has an understandable desire for nukes as a deterrent. They fear, and for good reason, that some future US president will decide he wants to 'spread freedom and democracy' and launch an invasion. It's happened before, it may happen again. The problem we have is the apparent unpredictability of North Korea: Their government frequently displays intense hostility towards just about the entire world and minor outbreaks of hostility are commonplace between them and South Korea. Between that and having almost all power centralised in the hands of just a handful of people, it raises the uncomfortable prospect that a nuclear-armed North Korea might just be one bad day away from believing their own propaganda and launching a preemptive strike.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[swb]

The problem is they've had 60-odd years to multiply and dig-in their artillery emplacements capable of hitting Seoul. I don't think there's a scenario where Seoul doesn't experience significant damage, no matter how effective counter-battery or airstrikes are at silencing those guns. Even pessimistically, 1500 guns getting off 10 rounds each is a lot of artillery strikes for a modern city to absorb. The ability to hit Seoul with artillery is a greater deterrent than nukes, and really Kim should have invested in dumb rocket launchers and even more artillery.

I think the only way Seoul escapes is some kind of decapitation strike that kills Kim and his immediate circle so convincingly that the rest of his military doesn't react and surrenders.

IMHO, this isn't entirely far-fetched -- my speculation is that in a country so paranoid, field commanders are scared witless and almost trained *not* to make decisions. I would question how many of them are existentially committed to fighting to the bitter end to protect and restore a new Kim-style dynasty in the event of the inner circle's untimely demise.

Trouble is, that decapitation strike is tactically difficult and the consequences of not doing it perfectly.

Re:NK *is* a credible threat

[MightyMartian]

The whole "Kim Jong Un is crazy" is, I suspect, exactly the kind of meme that the regime loves the rest of the world to believe. But I agree with you, NK's rulers are ultimately rational actors. Depraved, murderous, maybe even psychopathic, but certainly rational. There's no intent to invade, and the Kim Dynasty has known since the Korean War that the US will not countenance an invasion of South Korea, and that China and Russia (more China these days, of course) will not facilitate in any way renewed war with South Korea.

The entire purpose of the vast conventional arsenal pointed at Seoul, and of the development of nuclear weapons, is to assure the regime's survival. The only way those weapons ever actually get used is if the regime feels itself under threat, or if it is in outright collapse.

While the idea of NK having a significant nuclear arsenal doesn't bode well, the regime does not appear to be a suicidal one, and if it ever did actually use a nuclear weapon on South Korea, Japan or the US, China would, if it didn't directly intervene itself, at the very least stand back and let the US do what needed to be done. NK, like every nuclear state, has but one purpose for such weapons, to guarantee territorial integrity and regime survival.

Re:Who cares

[TechyImmigrant]

Just bomb them ASAP. It's clearly a criminal organization at the top. Time to put an end to it. 10,000 tomahawk missiles to strike the targets near the border at 3am. Loads of MOABs JDAMs for the rest of the country. My estimate is 2 days all done and after that South Korea can clean up the rest and integrate.

So when they put out all the paranoid rhetoric that the US is only out to invade and bomb them, are they really being paranoid?

Re:Who cares

[FrankSchwab]

It's entirely possible the 25 million people in and around Seoul care.
Just what do you think would happen when those Tomahawks show up on NK radar? Do you believe that NK doesn't have one or two nuclear warheads on top of short-range missiles with Prime minister Hwang Kyo-ahn's address on them? And hasn't let China, South Korea, and the US know?
There's no doubt that, if the US decided to "Desert Storm" the country, they could land hundreds of missiles and destroy all or most of NK's fixed military. Whether or not that would lead to destruction of Seoul, or a nuclear exchange with China, within 72 hours of the first salvo is an exercise left for the reader.

Airborne laser

[p51d007]

The U.S. has been experimenting with the ABL for years. Any chance they had this thing flying anywhere near the Korean area?

Re:Just like finding a crashed airliner under the

[dbIII]

Not so hard to find if you are looking in exactly the correct place and they are not running on batteries.

Sadly physics gets in the way of Tom Clancy fantasies.
Search and rescue plus a lot of other things would be easier if those fantasies were real.

Maybe read Frank Herbert's "The Dragon Under the Sea" or some non-fiction on the topic. Submarine detection isn't so easy even if the subs are old.

Naw, it's because NK doesn't have oil

[rsilvergun]

or anything else besides millions of refugees. Nobody wants to pop the boil that is NK. It'd be a humanitarian nightmare that you couldn't easily ignore like we do now.

Re:Just like finding a crashed airliner under the

[LWATCDR]

The fact that this is marked as insightful shows just how bad Slashdot has gotten.
1. We know where the subs home ports are.
2. Subs make noise and move under their own power.
3. North Korea's subs all have to run their diesel to recharge their batteries.
4. The subs of North Korea are old and loud and easy to find if they leave home waters.

To give an example the USSR lost a Golf class SB just like the one the North Korean's have sunk 1500 miles off the coast of Hawaii in 1968. The US found and recovered part of it.
Had that airliner been of interest to the US it would have been tracked from the start until it hit the water. Also if the airliner was still an airliner and not a collection of parts spread across the Indian Ocean we would have found it.