Ballistic missiles capable of striking the US mainland are being developed by North Korea from decommissioned Soviet hardware, according to a UK military journal.
The report in Jane鈥檚 Defence Weekly suggests North Korea has modified technology used in old Soviet submarines to construct both land and sea-based ballistic missile systems capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
A sea-based missile system would enable North Korea to threaten mainland US for the first time. It would also place the nation alongside the US, UK, France, China and Russia in having such a strategic threat.
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North Korea is currently developing another missile system named Taepodong. In 1998, it tested a Taepodong-1 rocket by firing it over Japan and in January 2003, the director of the CIA warned that the second generation missile, Taepodong-2, could feasibly reach the US.
But these missiles remain at an early stage of development and testing. So modifying older Soviet missile technology could provide a short cut to greater missile capabilities.
Asian intelligence
Joseph Bermudez, a special correspondent who wrote the article for Jane鈥檚 Defence Weekly, says: 鈥淢ost of the information is in the public domain, but intelligence sources in Asia provided more information.鈥�
These sources claim North Korea has constructed ballistic missile systems based on the R-21 and R-27 missile systems used by the Soviet Navy during the 1960s.
North Korea is said to have obtained designs and components for R-27s in the early 1990s. The single-stage liquid-fuel missiles are 9.6 metres in length and 1.5 metres in diameter. Military personnel with expertise in constructing R-27s also travelled to North Korea during the same period, according to the report.
North Korea is further said to have obtained missile hardware from 12 decommissioned Foxtrot-class and Gold-II class Soviet submarines it bought. These submarines included launch tubes and stabilising systems from the Soviet R-21 ballistic missile systems.
Experts say it would be well within North Korea鈥檚 technical capabilities to combine the R-21 and R-27 technologies to build its own missile systems. According to the Jane鈥檚 report, North Korea is developing a land-based system with a range of up to 4000 km and a sea-based system with range of 2500 km.
Fighting ships
Commenting on the sea-based system, Stephen Saunders, editor of another Jane鈥檚 publication Jane鈥檚 Fighting Ships, told 快猫短视频 that it would be much more likely to involve surface ships than submarines.
鈥淧urely from a technical point of view, using surface ships would appear to be the way ahead,鈥� he said, as building a new submarine or modifying an existing one to incorporate such a missile system would be extremely difficult.
Bhupendra Jasani, at the Department of War Studies at Kings College London in the UK, notes two cautionary points. Firstly, the rockets use liquid fuel, meaning they could not be safely kept ready for deployment. Also, there is little hard evidence that North Korea has developed or tested nuclear warheads that could be fitted to such missiles.
Western powers remain concerned about North Korea鈥檚 military capabilities and, in particular, the nation鈥檚 nuclear programme. But Jasani claims information about North Korea鈥檚 missile program can often be traced to US government鈥檚 efforts to garner support for a missile defence system.
However, Bermudez, points out that the planned US defence system is designed to focus on a fixed-location threat and could be less effective against mobile sea-based missiles. 鈥淸This information] could also be used by those who oppose the system,鈥� he told 快猫短视频.