Why North Korea is Trying To Develop a Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile
I wonder how much of North Korea’s submarine launched ballistic missile technology is a charade to make the outside world think they have advanced their technology more than they really have?:
North Korea’s new sea-launched, nuclear-capable ballistic missile and the submarine that fires it are both technologically backward, unreliable, and wickedly unsafe for the unfortunate souls tasked with operating them.In short, Pyongyang’s new undersea nuke—which the hermit regime test-launched off the country’s eastern coast on April 23—is a dud by any normal standard.
But that doesn’t matter, because normal standards of atomic safety and effectiveness don’t apply to North Korea’s totalitarian regime. Pyongyang has nuclear weapons plus at least one submarine that, however unreliably, can launch them. That rudimentary atomic capability is probably all the regime needs to deter the rest of the world… while also bending the international system’s rules for its own benefit. (……)
The submarine in question, apparently built in secrecy some time before 2010, appears to be a modified version of a Yugoslavian sub design from the mid-1970s.Approximately 220 feet long and displacing around 1,500 tons of water, the North Korean vessel is ancient and tiny compared to the latest U.S. and Russian ballistic-missile submarines, which can stretch 500 feet or more from bow to stern and displace 18,000 tons of water.
And the North Korean Pongdae-class sub—named for the boiler plant that serves as the official cover for the shipyard that reportedly built the vessel—is surely no less accident-prone than Pyongyang’s other submarines, one of which went missing and presumably sank while on patrol in early March.“I certainly wouldn’t want to be on a North Korean submarine,” Eric Wertheim, an independent U.S. naval analyst and author of Combat Fleets of the World, told The Daily Beast. “They’re not the safest of underwater platforms.” [The Daily Beast]
You can read the rest at the link.
“That rudimentary atomic capability is probably all the regime needs to deter the rest of the world…”
That’s the key right there … because you can’t operate under the assumption that if they try to launch an SLBM off the coast of Inchon at Seoul – that it’s probably going to fail.
It’s a very desperate move by KJU because it looks like China, the only benefactor North Korea has had for the last several years, has finally decided that it’s not going to fully support North Korea anymore. But it’s also a smart move because once North Korea has the nuclear option – no matter how shaky it is – the rest of the world has to accept that fact – and North Korea will be able to milk that for a whole lot of rice donations over the next several years; which is to say the regime will be able to continue to survive.
In short, Pyongyang’s new undersea nuke—which the hermit regime test-launched off the country’s eastern coast on April 23—is a dud by any normal standard.
—– end quote —–
It’s not a nuke. It’s a sub-launched missile that, so far, doesn’t seem to work very well. NK has managed to detonate some nukes in underground facilities under extremely controlled circumstances, but we have no indication that any of these were miniaturized devices, small and light enough to be mounted atop a missile of any size. A more likely present danger from a sub-launched NK missile would be the delivery of a dirty-bomb style warhead, possibly using radioactive fissionable material which we know they do have. If they can ever get their SLBM to fly more than 18 miles, then it might be time for their delivery system (the sub) to experience a mysterious mishap.
As they continue testing and collecting data, sooner or later they’re going to figure out how to do this right. It’s only a matter of time.
Or they’ll find a disgruntled person with the right knowledge. 🙁
The way they keep developing these missile and nuke programs makes me wonder where are they getting the components from?
“Everything” is manufactured in China these days…