North Korea’s Big Frickin’ Missile

Jeffrey Lewis 0:01

Well, that's a short conversation, Aaron, because it's huge. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:26

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Jeffrey 0:31

So, Aaron, what are we going to talk about today?

Aaron 0:33

Yo, Luke O'Brien, friend of the pod, and Super Producer Scott and I had drinks yesterday. Can we talk about that?

Jeffrey 0:41

Oh, yeah. And then maybe we could talk about the Middle East or South America.

Aaron 0:49

The weather's been lovely on the East Coast. I mean, it's been like in the low 50s, like high 40s. The sun's out. I'm walking around just a sports coat. It's nice.

Scott LaFoy 0:57

It's sunny here. On my radar, it was the high 4500s.

Jeffrey 1:04

So North Korea tested a really big freaking missile.

Aaron 1:08

Yeah, and they teased us, didn't they? Oh, my God.

Jeffrey 1:10

They teased us. Did they drag it out? For listeners who don't do this stuff in real time, you know, the North Koreans often do a launch and then you get a news broadcast. But the way the North Koreans did this was they did a launch in the middle of the night and then the next day they did a broadcast where all they did was Was show a picture of Kim Jong-un signing the order and then a picture of the order to do the launch.

And they provided almost no detail other than the fact that it had a new name, which suggested that it was different. So it's like, ooh, big surprise. And then they made us wait another 24 hours or so, I guess until the next day, not a full 24 hours. They made us wait to the next day when they finally gave us the pictures of the Hwasong-15, North Korea's new ICBM, which was not entirely unexpected.

But which is still a surprise to see this early.

Aaron 2:07

Yeah, just to give away what we were talking about at the bar yesterday, we were speculating about why there were no pictures. Am I right, Scott?

Scott 2:14

Yeah, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what they were trying to accomplish by releasing such little detail and so fragmented information.

Aaron 2:23

And as Mr. LaFoy is paying the bill and leaving, we get pictures and then we all said, oh, well, that entire conversation was ridiculous.

Jeffrey 2:29

The phrase you're looking for, Scott, is sexual tension.

Aaron 2:35

Yeah, we had all sorts of theories going on. Then they just said, whoa, look at this big f***er.

Jeffrey 2:40

Yeah, it's a fun-sized Titan II.

Aaron 2:44

So let's talk about that. It's a big f***, can I say that?

Jeffrey 2:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, the USB-52 is the buff, right? Big, ugly, fat f***. This is a buff. It's huge. It's very, very large. You know... One thing I guess the place to start is it is not a complete surprise because we were expecting the engine that we saw, or should I say engines?

Aaron 3:15

Engines, yeah. We had seen reports earlier from the U.S. side of an 80-ton engine. Well, it turns out it's engines.

Jeffrey 3:24

Right. So, you know, for listeners, North Korea has tested some new engines in the past year. One which was reported as an 80-ton engine in the fall of 2016, and another which they call the March 16th engine, which I actually think might be a 96-ton engine. At least that's kind of what I think the U.S. intelligence community thinks it is.

But what they were actually testing is half of those. They were testing one. These engines have two thrust chambers. And so when they say 80 or 96 tons, what they really mean is 40 or 48. And the engine that we saw in the Hwasong-12 and Hwasong-14, I mean, there's a debate about whether it was the 40 or the 48 ton version.

I come down on the 48 ton version side, but not everybody agrees with me and that's fine. But you could always tell because of the way the turbo pump was designed for these things that it was intended to be a pair. And so we knew that sooner or later we would see that main engine from the Hwasong-14 doubled up and in a much bigger missile.

I just wasn't expecting it today.

Scott 4:42

Yeah, and that's what I think I gave a similar quote to someone asking for it yesterday, which was, the missile itself was not necessarily, or the existence of a new ICBM later is not a surprise, but the details and timing are.

Jeffrey 5:00

Right. So we on our side are now trying to measure the thing, which is really nice because not only I think are we going to have some nice reference points on the transporter erector launcher, but they they loaded it onto the vehicle in a known building that we'll talk about in a minute. So I think we'll end up with pretty decent measurements of the size of the thing.

And once we have the size, we can estimate the mass and we have a video of the launch and we'll be able to make a guess about how much thrust it's pushing with. And I'm guessing it's going to be either 80 or 96 tons.

Aaron 5:33

Yeah, I mean, and I think that's a good jumping off point to get drilled down deeper is that you guys were able to geolocate first the building and then the launch site. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, Aaron. And that Joe Dempsey confirmed.

Jeffrey 5:47

I think you were first. I was first, and actually I'm sitting in the office with Dave, a.k.a. Geolocation Jesus, who I can't believe I got Anna Fifield to print that. I said it. It never occurred to me she would print it. And I'm literally sitting in the office with Dave, and I'm like, we should geolocate this. And Dave's like, oh, I got a lot to do.

It's going to take a long time. And in the back of my head, I'm thinking, I am not letting Dempsey beat me again. Because for listeners, Joe Dempsey, who we had on the pod in a giant episode that ended up being like three episodes.

Scott 6:21

A three-parter.

Jeffrey 6:23

Yeah. He's an incredible geolocator, and he's fast. He's really fast. Dave Schmerler beat him. Yeah. Well, no, I beat him.

Aaron 6:35

You beat him.

Jeffrey 6:35

Dave Schmerler wouldn't do it. Dave Schmerler went...

Aaron 6:38

He's slacking.

Jeffrey 6:39

Dave Schmerler went like, oh, like, oh, I got a lot to do. ... And I was like, no, no, I think I know where that building is because the building that the missile was loaded onto the truck is the same building that Kim Jong-un visited earlier in November at a place called the March 16th Automobile Factory. And Dave and I had geolocated that in early November because it's a truck factory.

And even though he was there looking at civilian trucks... The announcement they released said that it made National Defense products, too. And we suspected that it was going to be a new... I want to call it a transporter erector launcher. Are you going to get mad at me, Scott?

Scott 7:33

Always. That's my secret, is I'm always angry about transporter erector launchers.

Aaron 7:38

Yeah. At the Undisclosed Bar yesterday, we had a very, very long discussion about that and the axles.

Scott 7:45

And I think the discussion started with, hey, Scott, is it a tell? And then it was just sort of like, let's just sit back and watch the most pedantic frustration.

Jeffrey 7:54

Yeah. So for listeners, Scott gets really bothered that people call this transporter erector launcher, which transports and erects the missile, a tell because it doesn't launch the missile because it splits town. It's the deadbeat dad.

Aaron 8:11

But this wasn't the only thing you geolocated. So you got the... So we knew the building. You got where they loaded it, and then they rolled it out.

Jeffrey 8:17

Yeah, so they back it out of this door and do, like, you know, the last part of a three-point turn. You got the Austin Powers turn. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, this thing is huge. It's got nine axles. You know, it's, like, 28 meters long. Don't quote me on that. We're actually still trying to measure it, but it's big.

And they roll it out of the factory. And even though it's night, you can identify the features of the various buildings. And they take it out to a launch site. And by the way, we haven't published this yet, but we can even tell where it was launched.

Aaron 8:50

Well, don't leave the listeners in suspense because you've told us. Actually, we don't know the answer to this when we scripted the pod. There's something interesting about where you launched it.

Jeffrey 8:59

Well, so they launched it out in the field not far from the factory. Pretty close, actually, this time. We can see some of the signs in a planet image from around the launch. You can tell they did some construction to put down the concrete pad. And there's a couple of buildings. But the really fun part was to orient ourselves.

They had these... Boy, Trey, you're going to be annoyed at me because I'm going to screw this up. But there's a lively debate about why, but you can see the stars in the images. Is it Orion's belt right above it? You know, I'm actually crappy with constellations. I did it yesterday using a star chart to figure out which way it was oriented, and then I don't remember what any of the constellations are.

You know what's really sad about this is one of my sons loves astronomy, and And we have been learning the constellations together. And I just, I haven't gotten there yet. Well, we have light pollution. There was no light pollution in North Korea.

Aaron 10:03

Let's say one of the first things of the image I noticed was how many stars there were. And I was thinking in the back of my mind, like, well, there's no light pollution in North Korea. We've all seen that famous satellite imagery.

Jeffrey 10:11

Yeah, as it turns out, grinding poverty has its advantages. Right. There is actually one tiny, tiny, tiny... Light in the in on the ground that lights up a building, which then confirmed our geolocation. So they, that was nice, because you know, we we matched the buildings at the factory. They drive out of the factory, you see which way they drive out of the factory, and we're pretty sure we know where the launch site is. We haven't figured out where Kim is yet, because guess what? He's watching it from. He's back in the pictures. Like he's not like so close. Yeah, he's in, he's in an expandable trailer.

Aaron 10:46

Like one of those star trailers for Los Angeles-based listeners that has a little pop-out for the kitchen? Yes.

Jeffrey 10:52

I mean, it doesn't have a kitchen, obviously, but yeah, it pops out. And it's got this glass enclosure that seems to pop out. And so he can kind of look out and look up. So we're trying to figure out who the maker of the trailer is. But they've put red velvet on the handles and red velvet... On at least some of the stairs.

Aaron 11:12

Who's in charge of the buffet? Because that's the most important thing at these shoots. But how far is it from one to the other? From the load facility to the pad to the firing point?

Jeffrey 11:26

Not very far at all. I mean, it's it's like less than a kilometer which I guess makes sense because this is a really really big missile, and it has a really really big transporter erector launcher which they claim they made themselves. So we can talk about whether we believe that or not, but this thing is huge. It has nine axles.

And I think they probably didn't want to drive it all that far. I make it less than a kilometer as the crow flies, but they had to, like, drive it out there.

Aaron 12:04

So, you know, if they went on the roads, it was probably, like, a kilometer and a half. So this leads to where I sort of step back and listen, because we've got to talk about the tell. Or not. Somebody's got a 13.

Jeffrey 12:23

Listen to Scott just having a heart attack back there.

Scott 12:27

It's the deadbeat dad. See, the deadbeat dad's good.

Jeffrey 12:31

There's an erection and it splits town.

Aaron 12:40

Well, let's talk about it. Because one of the things we were talking about yesterday at the set undisclosed bar was whether or not, this is before we had the pictures, if it would have nine axles. That's where Scott's brain was at yesterday. He was talking about what he was looking for, and I can confirm this as having been there, Luke O'Brien can second it, is that he was looking at how many axles it would have to see if it was bigger.

This was before we had the missile. That's right.

Scott 13:04

Yeah. And so I, I wrote a very nice article for NK pro casing out what a nine axle, like all the variations of what a nine axle tell could actually look like in North Korea. And I was right. Well, I think I'm right where this is an expanded version of the Chinese one. Which we'll talk about in a bit.

But it does the same thing that the Hwasong-12 did for part of its testing and that the Hwasong-14 still does in its testing. And that's that it has a launch table that separates. So it's a transporter, it's an erector, and then it gets the hell away from where a giant missile is about to go off and potentially explode.

So it's not a tell. Oh, man, and here's where y'all get me on, Pedantry. It's a tell modified to be a TE in the hopes that the testing will go well enough that it can be a tell in the future. Again.

Aaron 13:59

But you guys were debating off-pot about whether you think they made it themselves.

Jeffrey 14:02

Yeah, well, that's... I mean, I'm just... Distinctly in the minority of credulity here. So, Scott, why don't you... Scott, I know you think that they... Well, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you think they added an axle to one of the existing Chinese transporter erectors, right?

Scott 14:23

Yeah, I think that is, in my opinion, the simplest answer, is that this thing that looks a whole lot like a WS-51200. What is it, 51200? How do you say that? One of the lumber trucks that we saw with the KNO-8s and the Kwasong-14. I think the simplest explanation is that they... Modified it by either adding an additional Axle on the end or cutting it in half and adding a...

There's kind of a strange Axle in the middle that it could be. But I think the easiest thing is, like, we've seen them do that before. We know that the Mazes that they used for the early Scuds, they added an Axle onto those, if I remember correctly, to carry the Nodong. They have the, I don't know, tank chassis names, but they have that tank chassis that suddenly has extra axles on the back that carries their maneuverable scud that they've been experimenting with.

We have seen them modify very heavy vehicles before. This is still the biggest one. Whether they made it themselves or they modified it, it's the biggest one we've seen them do. And I was trying to case out sort of analytically what it would take to prove it one way or another. And it ends up being kind of difficult unless we have like the exact manual for the lumber trucks or they take us on a tour of a facility where they are actually building one and it's under construction.

Jeffrey 15:42

And so that ultimately is my problem or where I am stuck. I mean, if we listen to the propaganda, they clearly state that they made the truck themselves. And then our job as analysts, obviously, is to come back and decide whether that's true. But the subtext... Of launching it from the March 16th factory, which does not make missiles, it makes trucks, is we make it and this is where we made it, which may or may not be true.

Aaron 16:09

You should tell the listener, let me stop you guys here, because the listener, tell the listener about where the original truck comes from. So, Scott, you said lumber truck. Maybe you just want to tell the listeners that these are, where these were imported from and then how they were repurposed.

Scott 16:23

It's your standard run-of-the-mill eight-axle heavy lumber truck produced by a space and ballistic missile company in China that assures us that these were not built and insuitable for those activities.

Jeffrey 16:36

Yes, the Wanshan Special Vehicle Company in China, which manufactures transporter erector launchers for the Chinese rocket forces, believed the North Koreans when they said they wanted them as lumber trucks. Well, they have a lot of lumber.

Scott 16:53

Maybe that would explain the deforestation in the DPRK. They got these really nice lumber trucks, and so they just went wild on their mountains. So the ones I'm talking about that the K-08s were paraded on, that the Hwasong-14 appears to use, appear to be Chinese origin, originally. This one has a lot of similarities to it. There are very significant differences, but it's... Yeah, I'll leave that for another thing.

Jeffrey 17:18

And so, I mean, the reason... The place that I'm stuck, analytically, is we have seen... We saw these trucks that they imported from China. And we actually, we kind of don't know how many they imported. Like, we think we know.

Scott 17:35

Oh, I've been super vague about that when answering questions about this. That's why I use the phrase, the series of lumber trucks imported from China.

Jeffrey 17:42

Yeah, but like, I mean...

Scott 17:45

It should be six. Should be six. But it also shouldn't have been sold. It should have been zero. Yeah.

Jeffrey 17:53

It was at least six. But you know, one of the, one of the challenges that, that I've had analytically with, with the eight axle version, which is what the Chinese sold, the Chinese sold this eight axle version with a cab. And actually we did a nice bit of research where we found where the North Koreans added the erector part, right?

Scott 18:11

Which is where the, and we should probably note, cause if we're talking about how the subtext of launching from this factory is that they make trucks here, the implication being that they made this truck, the Hwasong-14 was tested from where they modify trucks, right?

Jeffrey 18:25

That's right. The last one was from where they modify trucks, which Allison Puccione thinks doubles as an operational missile base. And other people disagree, but I got to say, getting an operational launch out of the thing. Okay. I think she might be right. We have seen small changes in the cabs of these vehicles. And so... One of my questions, you know, there was the, if you think back to the parade right in April, in April, we saw some of the vehicles modified to carry canisters, yes, and we saw how many. So there are, yeah, so in the parade there are four plus, there's a fifth one that peels off. Right, right.

Because they had a backup.

Scott 19:25

Which is common practice in parades.

Jeffrey 19:27

That transporter erector launcher looks different than the one that we saw launch the Hwasong-14, which had a modified cab. And so one possibility is that there are six, that there are five that they modified for that parade, and a sixth which is modified to launch the Hwasong-14. Right? Yes.

Scott 19:50

That is one case. That is correct.

Jeffrey 19:53

It is also possible that there are more than six. Yes. That some have been modified for the Hwasong-14, others have been modified to carry this canister. And I just don't know, because obviously a cab, the part where you sit, is not super functional, and you could just change that. The North Koreans could change that easily.

Scott 20:16

Yeah, they could at this point have hot, swappable roofs. Right.

Jeffrey 20:19

And so, you know, it's really about the chassis. And it seems to me it's equally plausible that... Three things. One is that they have a limited number of chassis and they're having them do double duty. A second is they have more chassis than we realized because the credulous Chinese special vehicle manufacturer... You know, had a larger shipment than they want to cop to.

Or, you know, the third is that they're making not great copies.

Aaron 20:54

Isn't it the engine too, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey 20:57

Yeah, it's the engine. I mean, it's the engine in the chassis.

Aaron 21:02

Do they have the capacity to make engines? I mean, could they simply be importing engines and then making it themselves?

Scott 21:07

Well, you know, if you can't make engines, you can't make nuclear weapons.

Aaron 21:12

Thanks for it.

Jeffrey 21:13

But that's the problem we're at, which is if you look at this March 16th factory, it was set up as a joint venture with a Russian heavy vehicle manufacturer. Of course it was. And in fairness, the Russians said after a couple of years, they ended the cooperation. And so I think, you know, this has been like, I think the North Koreans have been on their own for, you know, something like a decade.

So they've been doing something at this truck place for a decade, right? And I think the challenge that I face analytically, because I'm not sure with a chassis it's easy to just add another wheel. You know, there's a certain level of difficulty there. Well, I mean, I used to work on Volkswagens.

Aaron 22:01

You could just weld it out, but this is so big. Well, but it's got to be able to support, the chassis has to be able to support the weight of the missile. Yeah, it's really big.

Jeffrey 22:09

And it's got this enormous mechanism on it in order to lift the missile. So I, you know, I mean, the thing is they have been working at this for 10 years, I presume. And I just don't know, like, given that we don't, there are two analytic ways to approach this problem. One is that you wait for the North Koreans to demonstrate everything.

But if you do that, the problem is you will constantly be surprised because they like, you know, like one day they learn how to do something. And so the other analytic approach is to sort of, is to try to look at their industrial capabilities broadly and, Imagine whatever technology transfer was involved in the joint venture, and the Russians say it wasn't much, but you don't really know, and then try to guess or estimate what they could do with another 10 years.

And so I just don't know. I mean, they bought these trucks some years ago from the Chinese. They've certainly tried, I presume, tried to copy them. I just, you know, is this a bad copy? I don't know.

Aaron 23:15

You'd think for the first test they don't want to use a bad copy, which lends credence to the idea that they modified one.

Jeffrey 23:22

Yeah, although I'm not sure how easy it is. We should probably talk to somebody about how easy it is to add an axle.

Scott 23:26

Well, that's the frustrating thing is we watch missiles and WMDs for a long time and it's like, yeah, but I don't know anything about truck transmission. I don't know anything about the drivetrain on like a nine axle heavy vehicle. Like, man, it's a significant specialization jump.

Aaron 23:44

Yeah. Well, why don't you talk about why it needs nine axles, and then we can pivot to, like, why this missile's so big.

Jeffrey 23:50

Well, that's a short conversation, because it's f***ing huge. Yeah.

Aaron 23:53

Right, because the missile's big, and what it's carrying, like, the front end, I think, is the business end of this missile.

Jeffrey 23:57

Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the third thing to talk about. So, you know, the first thing we would talk about is it's a giant missile. The second thing is that the truck now has nine axles and starts to raise these questions about where the North Koreans are in developing their own launchers, which, by the way, is important because...

When they're limited to six launchers, their arsenal is limited to six launchers because they're not going to get a chance to reload.

Scott 24:18

Unless they diversify basing modes like the Chinese did.

Jeffrey 24:21

Right.

Scott 24:21

But that's a different thing to look for.

Jeffrey 24:23

Or go further and do rail.

Scott 24:24

Exactly. And before we get to a third case, just on the last thing on the tells, one more analytic tool for kind of watching how many they have. If they only ever for the rest of time parade four of these, four 8-axle ones, like... The 9th axle and the modifications made to accommodate the Hwasong-15 were much more significant than the modifications made to carry anything else that chassis has carried.

I'm not sure it's reversible very easily.

Jeffrey 25:00

Right, right, right, right. Good point. But to go back, I mean, the reason we care about this is what they said in the statement is they can now make as many of these as they want. If that's true, which may or may not be true, if that's true, then, you know, the fact that we have a missile defense size to deal with 11 missiles is a...

Aaron 25:22

A disappointing situation. And you say that because we have 44 interceptors up in Alaska with some down in California, and four per one incoming gives you 44 missiles, 11 missiles.

Jeffrey 25:35

Yeah, so if they can build 12 trucks and missiles, we're f***ed. Well, no, actually, we're not. It's just going to cost, I forget, I calculated it. It's $300 million is the marginal cost of adding four interceptors in order to defeat each additional North Korean missile.

Scott 25:51

Just live with deterrence. It's much cheaper.

Jeffrey 25:54

Yeah. This is why things are supposed to be cost-effective at the margin. Paul Nitze.

Aaron 26:01

Very straightforward. And he's a conservative. But nine axles to carry the mini-Titan. The Titan, I should say.

Jeffrey 26:10

Fun-sized Titan.

Aaron 26:11

It's smaller than a Titan.

Jeffrey 26:12

Alright, so the last thing we gotta talk about is the warhead. Yes. Because it's freaking big. Yeah. Yeah. And they described it as a super heavy, large sized warhead. Or was it super large, heavy warhead? Super large, heavy. Sorry, the Korean really throws me.

Scott 26:31

This was a very weird, this whole thing was very weirdly worded in their press releases.

Jeffrey 26:35

Yep. But there is, and I think Rebecca Rambar, a Twitter person who I don't know in person, but who has excellent eyesight and a real interest in North Korean missiles, posted an image that another Twitter user noted. There's a, in Kim's trailer, There is a computer screen that has onboard camera footage. And that onboard camera footage includes a camera inside the warhead.

And it turns out that's a shroud. And there's a reentry vehicle inside that. And so there's a lot of space in there. So they could either be one, Planning to build an even larger thermonuclear weapon, which I presume would just have a bigger yield. They could be planning multiple warheads, or they could be planning to use that space on penetration aids to defeat missile defenses.

Or maybe they just want to get all the way down to Mar-a-Lago and f*** some s*** up.

Aaron 27:44

Yeah, nothing to add there because it's big. It's big. It's so big. There's nothing to add there. When you look at everything about this missile, it's big, including the front end. And it raises the possibility. I think the first thing that comes to everybody's minds is multiple warheads.

Jeffrey 27:59

Yeah, I mean, I don't really know. You know, I think the analytic place that we need to get with the North Koreans now is in the past because they were copying things. They were constrained. And so it was easy to sort of predict their technological direction because they were operating within these pretty clearly identifiable constraints. And now they have choices.

Like, do you want to hit Florida? Do you want to hit New York with multiple warheads? Do you want to pack on missile defense countermeasures to make sure you beat the system in Alaska? Do you want to make a really big warhead that's going to have like a megaton of yield? Like they can do any of those things.

And it's not, like, we can't, like, we're now out of the prediction game because in the past it was like, well, they only have, like, these two choices. But now they've got, like, the world's their oyster and, like, what they pick is about what they want. And that's a new and an unusual situation.

Scott 29:00

And to just preempt that angry email series that our official email will get, that's not saying they have them. And that's certainly not saying that that's exactly where they are. They don't have a MIRV, as far as we can tell. That's a very complex, very complex development that required a lot of testing when other people developed it.

But it does mean that they've built sort of the... First part of opening up those possibilities in their future missile systems, assuming they could actually pull off those other developments as well. They look like they have something heavy enough that, like, throw weight is going to come back into vogue as a term for analysis, possibly. Yeah.

Jeffrey 29:42

And I mean, they could do, I mean, the Soviets did this at first, right? The Soviets just had multiple warheads without independently targeting them. So they just fell in a cluster. Which, you know, makes a certain amount of sense if you're looking to do certain things in terms of damage. You know, sometimes having a larger warhead is not as good as having three smaller ones.

Aaron 30:03

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jeffrey 30:06

Equivalent megatons and all. Also, you know, maybe you want to start a big old blast fire.

Aaron 30:14

We laugh about this stuff. People think we're crazy. No, it's grim.

Jeffrey 30:18

It's grim. It's grim. It's grim. You know, there's a ton of funny stuff in the videos. Two guys holding hands, screaming into the phone. That's awesome.

Scott 30:25

Oh, yeah. I feel like increasingly their PR teams are trying to mess with us just because they're releasing some very, between like the piggyback ride and guys screaming into the phone. Like, there's just some weird stuff going on in the background of a lot of these now. That was Kim's ear.

Jeffrey 30:42

You know, we haven't run any of the images through the forensic software yet. Okay. I'm doing the pod with you. This morning, it's all about measuring the missile, estimating its weight from its size, and then measuring its acceleration, and then using our new fancy pants video forensic software to turn night into day. Because every time we do that, the North Koreans think that the stuff that's dark is dark.

And can't be seen, but we can actually turn off the light and then you see like all the minions scurrying around. We got Kim Jong-un smoking in one video that we weren't supposed to be able to see. You know, you see all kinds of fun stuff. And we'll use that to finish the geolocation and probably understand the launch operations a little bit better.

Aaron 31:34

But actually, I got a Russian ambassador here today, so I got to go listen to Fancy. Let's just finish it out here. I mean, what's the big takeaway? I mean, I think the big takeaway from this pod is that it's big. The TE to turn into, to test what will become a TEL, Scott, is nine axles. Because the thing is big, and they have a big front end, and so that they have options for down the road, assuming a linear trajectory of technological development, they're now making choices about what they want their missile forces to look like, at least in terms of what they're able to deliver to the United States, how and why.

Scott 32:18

They're opening new avenues of technology, potentially.

Jeffrey 32:21

Yeah. Well, and that's the big point that I kind of wanted to try to emphasize, which is... It's going to change the way we do analysis because we're not going to be in this business of using their constraints to predict their behavior. We're going to be in this business of trying to understand their motivations because the constraints are going to be a lot less.

Aaron 32:50

That's different. That is exactly right. Yeah. At the bar yesterday, we were talking about motivations and we were trying to figure out Why? I mean, this was before the picture release, but we were trying to run through scenarios about why they would delay a picture release. We weren't questioning that the missile worked, because obviously we had all the data. Well, we were questioning like, like, why would they do it like this? And I think that that is, you know, goes to your point, is that we're no longer trying to infer whether or not this stuff works and what the next technological leaps are. We're already there, and therefore we have to try and figure out why they would try to go in a certain route.

Scott 33:27

And it's interesting because I've gotten several people I've seen talking about whether or not, what's the phrase being used, is that North Korea has arrived and is going to settle down because it's reached its goal. But like, yeah. No. Yeah, we've got a big honking ICBM, but not many countries have built a big honking ICBM and be like, cool, I'm done.

Jeffrey 33:52

No country has built a big honking ICBM and said, I'm done.

Scott 33:56

It's interesting, right? I was going to say, there's literally like... I feel like when I've seen those articles, there's literally a submarine-launched ballistic missile program that is active, that is very active and developing. Like... An entire new fuel set. Like we've got so much stuff coming down the road that's not going to end at one big, probably inefficient liquid, like second or third generation liquid fueled ICBM.

Jeffrey 34:26

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think this was prompted by the fact that they said they had completed their goals and human beings love to engage in wishful thinking. And so people are like, oh, that's great. Then now they're going to having completed their goals, they're going to trade it away. Or like, I don't I don't know what like people think.

But yeah. They mean that they have completed their first generation of nuclear systems. And I think they like being able to target the United States, that that is something that Kim thinks puts him in a protected state that Saddam or Gaddafi did not enjoy. And yeah, the solid-fueled missile program is coming next, and it's going to come fast.

Scott 35:12

Well, they accelerate so quickly.

Aaron 35:15

The happy note here is that...

Jeffrey 35:18

I'm going to stay employed! You're going to stay employed?

Aaron 35:22

There'll be more grant money out there to continue this, so maybe all of us can get a share of the pie. And two, did we meet our deadline? Fire a missile, get a pot? Yeah. Oh, I think so. So we kept the listeners happy. Because I can tell you, in my notification Twitter feed, people are upset it took us 48 hours to record this podcast.

Scott 35:43

Oh, yeah, I made an announcement on Slack because, man, Slack, you disappeared. Because I work, and so I can't be in Slack all the time. So I'm administering, but I check back in, see how the threads are doing, make sure everyone's going on. And it's like, oh, there have been 400 comments since I last checked this board.

Man, just... So now we'll have the pod. Everyone can be happy. We were waiting for the imagery so that it would be a good pod.

Aaron 36:10

Well, that's a good advertisement for the Slack channel, Scott. So tell everybody how to get involved.

Scott 36:14

Yeah. If you would like to be part of the Arms Control Wonk Slack channel, which is a channel for academic discussion, professional debate, and sort of all things that we cover on the pod, there's a fantastic community of people. You can join them if you go to patreon.com slash acwpodcast.com. Patreon.com slash acw podcast and for three dollars a month if you are a student or five dollars a month if you are not a student you can come join our community aaron and scott thank you for joining me always a pleasure happy to be here and thank you for listening