Old weapons may have helped Kim
The powerful intercontinental ballistic missile tested by North Korea late last year is ‘‘highly likely’’ to have been built with foreign blueprints or parts, according to a new technical analysis that describes multiple similarities between the missile and ones built by the Soviet Union decades ago.
The foreign assistance – the precise nature of which is still unclear – could explain why North Korea apparently was able to skip the months and even years of preliminary testing normally associated with any advanced new missile system, the report by United States and German experts says.
The missile, dubbed Hwasong-15, had never been seen publicly until its successful maiden test on November 28, when it flew 4500 kilometres in a nearly vertical trajectory before splashing into the Sea of Japan. The 23-metre colossus was the one of two ICBMs to appear abruptly on North Korean launch pads last year, and the first with sufficient range to strike cities across the entire continental US.
Intelligence agencies have long believed that North Korea incorporated Soviet designs in many of its missiles, including a submarine-launched missile successfully tested in 2016. But experts have been mystified over North Korean leader Kim Jongun’s rapid gains in long-range missile technology, including back-to-back successful tests of two different ICBMS last year.
The new report builds an elaborate, if partly circumstantial, case linking North Korea’s newest missile to Soviet designs dating as far back as the mid-1960s.
The evidence includes striking similarities between the Hwasong15 and a family of Soviet-era missiles, including one that was developed by Russian engineers but abandoned before production began, according to the report prepared for Jane’s Intelligence Review, a British-based journal that focuses on international security threats.
It was written by Markus Schiller, a Munich-based space technology analyst, and Nick Hansen, an imagery specialist with a 47-year career with the US intelligence community.
Based on new computer modelling and enhanced images of the North Korean missile, the researchers concluded that the foreign support ‘‘was derived from the Sovietera ballistic missile programme’’, though it was unclear exactly when or how the transfer took place.
The researchers found, for example, that the North Korean missile’s size and shape echoed those of the UR-100, a two-stage, solid-fuel missile built by the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, with a few differences. It appears to use the same potent fuel mixture – a highenergy liquid propellant that only recently came into use in North Korea.
The similarities appeared to implicate the former Soviet Union as the original source of the technology, and not China or Iran, as some analysts had speculated, the researchers said.
The authors also posit that the Hwasong-15 may actually be a clone of a different Soviet-era missile that was never brought into full production.
That missile, the R-37, was developed as part of a competition between two rival missile design bureaus as the Soviet Union searched for an answer to the Minuteman ICBM developed by the US in the 1960s. The UR-100 won the competition.
Though acknowledging that he had no proof, Schiller said he believed the Hwasong-15 may have been assembled from actual parts of the R-37 or a similar Soviet-era missile that was stolen or sold on the black market.