Transcript
Transcribed automatically: it certainly contains errors. It’s pretty good, just not perfect. We provide it here because, for accessibility, it’s better than nothing.
Scott LaFoy
0:02
I hate multiple rocket launcher systems so much.
Jeffrey Lewis
0:08
You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
Scott
0:26
And I'm Scott LaFoy, super producer at the Arms Control Wonk Podcast.
Anne Pellegrino
0:31
And I'm Anne Pellegrino. And I have some bittersweet news. Oh no! Yes. Listeners, this is my last time recording as an official co-host of the Arms Control Wonk Podcast.
Jeffrey
0:46
We'll bring you back as an uncompensated guest.
Anne
0:50
You know what? That'll be great because I have a new job. You don't get to know what it is yet. All in good time. But I am so, so beyond thrilled. I'm like freaking pumped. And as sad as it is to leave the podcast in my official capacity, I imagine that there will be many an opportunity to come back as a guest every now and again.
Jeffrey
1:18
We're not saying why, though.
Anne
1:20
No, not yet. Not yet. I'm going to let it linger.
Jeffrey
1:23
Listeners, you haven't heard the last of Anne Pellegrino.
Anne
1:27
No, I'll still be around. I'll still be lurking on Twitter, just in a completely different capacity. And yeah, this is like a dream come true. So you all can just sit with that for a little bit. And I'm just going to let the anticipation build for you all, because I think that you will be... Also quite happy with where I've ended up.
Jeffrey
1:52
One last time, though. What'd you bake this weekend?
Anne
1:56
Oh my gosh. Okay, so this is kind of funny. Also bittersweet news. I accidentally let my starters die, which is like in the terms of bread baking and is a total sacrilege.
Jeffrey
2:08
Wait, wait, bittersweet? What's the sweet part? That's just bitter. Because...
Anne
2:13
No, no, no. The good thing is, is because I don't have to rely on baking sourdough as like a crutch anymore. I'm finally free. I'm finally free. My life is back in order.
Scott
2:25
This was the start of it dated back to the days of Annie Oakley. Oh, no. I'm just going to go ahead and put that out there. The listeners have been spared, fortunately.
Jeffrey
2:36
I know, but I was only vaguely alluding to it.
Anne
2:41
Well, yes, Headstarter is gone, is no more. However, I can make my own. Should I, you know, need to delve back into the...
Scott
2:54
The time suck that is sourdough bread. But don't worry, Jeffrey, I will still, I will still bake bread for you and drop off some olive loaves. Describing your sourdough starters dying as a bittersweet release definitely sounds like you slowly put them under a pillow one night and just waited until they stopped and did a compassionate release of your sourdough starters.
Anne
3:21
They turned into more like a hazardous science experiment in my fridge. I probably could have killed someone if I baked them bread with what grew in that container.
Jeffrey
3:32
All right. Well, you know what's not bittersweet, Scott.
Anne
3:36
What's not bittersweet?
Jeffrey
3:37
What's just sweet from top to bottom.
Scott
3:41
Is we got a new military parade in North Korea!
Jeffrey
3:44
Woo-hoo! So I was trying to come up with a good, clever name for it, and the one I liked in the end, since it was the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea, was Workers' Party-gra. Oh, not bad.
Anne
3:58
I like it. I was actually toasting this weekend with a lot of champagne, so that fits the theme.
Jeffrey
4:09
Yes. So North Korea on October 10th conducted a massive military parade. We knew it was going to be massive because we saw all of the shelters go up for all the vehicles, but to see them all, As well as several new friends we haven't seen before. I was pretty excited.
Anne
4:28
So, okay, how do we want to go through this parade in an organized, efficient manner? Because there's a lot to go through.
Jeffrey
4:39
Well, I think we should start with the speech.
Jeffrey
4:44
Because the speech... That Kim Jong-un gave, which some people online are calling tame, and I suppose it is tame by the very boisterous standards of the DPRK, but it was not a nice message.
Scott
4:58
I like to think he pivoted to a new tone, and this was truly the night where Kim Jong-un became president.
Anne
5:08
I mean, no. It's like, speak loud, carry a big stick.
Jeffrey
5:15
I think for me the most important part of the speech was When Kim said... Well, first, I think people are slightly misinterpreting what he said, because he said that North Korea wouldn't use nuclear weapons preemptively. That's the word that they chose in the translation. But he did say that if North Korea were to come under attack, not nuclear attack, just, you know, a general attack, that North Korea would use nuclear weapons in advance.
And so it was the first... It's the first time I've seen a North Korean leader make the argument that I've made in academic papers and in one moderately well-received novel that the DPRK strategy is to use nuclear weapons against U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan on day one of any war. Invasion or what they might think is an invasion.
And so to to hear Kim say that while these aren't really for preemptive use, that if the country were to come under attack, they would use them in advance in order to stop the attack. That that was like. Very satisfying from a scholarly perspective and then also, you know, terrifying from a strategic stability perspective.
Anne
6:35
You have to stop being right. Really, I implore you, you have to stop being right.
Jeffrey
6:40
Well, I was wrong in that we, you know, survived March 2020. So here we are. Bonus time. Jesus. So that's what I took from the speech. I don't know about the two of you, but the we would use nuclear weapons in advance to stop your invasion struck me as a pretty forthright statement of DPRK nuclear policy.
Anne
6:59
So here's my question. And this is coming from me who, you know, yes, I was part of the... Missile madness crew. But I didn't necessarily study doctrine and what North Korea has or has not said up to this point about, you know, what their use doctrine would be. And is this one of the kind of first more explicit times that we've heard some, what, what, what could amount to policy from Kim?
Jeffrey
7:38
I would say so. I haven't seen anything like this. A couple of years ago, they did their own quote-unquote nuclear posture review, which really was just a statement from KCNA that used this language that typically gets translated as the purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter and repel an invasion. But they never really talked about what repel meant.
Previously, we always relied on Defector testimony or the maps that were in front of Kim Jong-un that showed the targets that they would be using nuclear weapons against. And so I think this is the first time that the leader has said the thing that is attributed to the leader, which is that these weapons are for using in advance to stave off or repel an invasion.
Anne
8:22
Okay, so that is a big deal. That is a big deal. And I would not call that tame at all.
Jeffrey
8:27
The opposite of tame. Also, did you see the statement they released called it a called the the last four missiles, which we'll talk about pretty soon. The huge nuclear strategic force.
Jeffrey
8:44
They doubled down on the size. They're huge.
Anne
8:47
That doesn't lend itself well to an acronym. I'm a little disappointed in that.
Jeffrey
8:53
I'm just disappointed they didn't call it the humongous. Nuclear strategic force. Although maybe there's time, maybe if we keep this up, the next missile we'll see will be humongous in, in terms of absolutely shooting the segue in the head, though. They started with a tank, not a missile. The first thing we, they started with, what I mean, they started with small arms. But do you want to jump? Do you want, do you want to talk about the tanks? Because you know, in the arms control podcast, if it doesn't fission or carry something that fissions, I don't care. But if you want to, if you want to talk about the tank, no.
Scott
9:26
I was online with the Arms Control Wonk Slack community Discord channel doing a voice chat when we were getting teased about the parade while we were waiting for it to show up in propaganda. And they tried to convince me that a Hellfire missile is a missile. And as far as I'm concerned, anything smaller than a Scud is more or less a small arm.
So I'm happy to skip right ahead to the good stuff.
Anne
9:45
You know what? Everyone wants the good stuff, so we just jump right ahead.
Scott
9:49
So I have an open question, though, for the group. Shu Teran had a phenomenal picture that he posted up from KCNA where it's just tubes on tubes on tubes, where it is just all of the MRLS tubes that we've essentially seen over the last two years, more or less, in one picture. Do you want to talk about MRLS?
Yes.
Jeffrey
10:11
I do, because in addition to all the things we saw in this parade, we have the commemorative book that North Korea recently released, which seems to strongly imply that at least the 600 millimeter rocket artillery is designed for a nuclear mission, which would be a thing Pakistan did. This is a thing we've all been wondering about. That the, you know, one question is why would you have a 600 millimeter artillery shell to begin with?
Yep. Because it's pretty big. And then to have the kind of implication from, you know, what's a commemorative book. So it's not really like an authoritative statement. It's not as good as KCNA saying this is a nuclear system. Right. But just seeing all the artillery on display. Really drove home how much of a commitment they have made to modernizing the KPA, particularly in, you know, what they would consider high-tech weapons. Yeah, this was the one of the few big parades we've seen where they're not doing Rodongs and Hwasong five or sixes anymore.
Scott
11:20
They've had parades without those before, but they haven't had missile parades prior that I can remember where they haven't had their scuds on display, basically. And instead of scuds and instead of super large artillery shell pieces, we have very big, very important MRLS that are front and center the entire time. And dressed up, of course, in desert livery.
So I do appreciate North Korea's presumed contribution to coalition forces in the Middle East in the upcoming years.
Anne
11:52
Yeah, they've just leveled up all over the place. This, this parade was, I don't know what I expected, but it was not, not bad. And it's, it's always, it's, there's always this weird feeling you get watching one of these parades where you're like, what are they going to show next? What are they going to show next? And when you see it, you're like, oh my god, this is amazing, this is awesome. And then you're like, oh wow.
You know, awesome from the analytical standpoint.
Scott
12:18
The analyst part of my brain likes this, but the part of my brain that has to live in the world where this exists does not like this. Could you clarify real quick the 600? So one of the confusing things for folks this year has been the different multiple rocket launcher systems and close or short range ballistic missiles.
Could you clarify quickly which one is the 600 millimeter one? Because millimeters are not painted on the side and are very hard to ballpark. Is that the A-Tachems? Is that the Kim Scander? Is that the super large tubed artillery? Is that the mega large tubed artillery? One of these I made up.
Jeffrey
12:53
So the 600 millimeter MLRS is not either of the ballistic missiles you mentioned, the KN-23 and the KN-24. This is the KN-25, which the North Koreans call the super large caliber multiple rocket launcher, which distinguishes it from the KN-09, which is merely the large caliber. I hate multiple rocket launcher systems so much.
Anne
13:21
You know what? I'm really glad I don't really have to deal with all these missile designations anymore. I'll leave that work to you all.
Jeffrey
13:32
I did. I mean, I am obviously more excited about the Pukuk Song 4A and about the new ICBM than I am anything else. But it is important to emphasize that the North Koreans were very excited about all the new artillery and short range ballistic missiles that they have produced and tested over the past year. And we saw all of them on parade.
And I think in any other year,
Scott
13:56
That would have been really exciting. But then there's some other goofy, well, they're doing 2017 to us again. It's just hard to keep up with everything. But the, the last note on that is the 600 millimeter, the super large was listed essentially in the same category as what we would consider big scary strategic systems by the North Koreans in their nice tabletop book that I would like very much delivered to my door if it didn't bring sanctions.
Jeffrey
14:21
Maybe we can use some Patreon money for one for you, Scott.
Scott
14:24
Nope. I need anyone at OFAC. We won't. All of our paid notes. Everything's cool. don't mail it to my address. Okay, so after the, so after the 600 millimeter, so there was a large amount of artillery shown in a lot of weird configurations. They took artillery that we've seen before, they put it on trucks that we haven't seen it before with, they put it in numbers we haven't seen it before. But at the end of the day, it was basically very large tubes of artillery.
Sometimes on a truck, sometimes on a tank, sometimes there were four, sometimes there were six, sometimes there was between four and six. And it's very weird. And there's some weirdness with the tubes that we're not going to get into that makes it... There's some confusing aspects to those, as there are...
Jeffrey
15:09
The five tubes was weird.
Scott
15:10
The five tubes is really weird and has some signatures associated with it that are curious, but this is not the time nor place, because right after our Batubid friends was our presumably Batubid friend, the Pukuk song for something. Shiut, technically. The four Shiut. Because it... And now you're looking at me, this may be a fight on air.
So the Pukuksong-4 was paraded. Now this appears to be, by all indications, a solid propellant missile. It did not come in the naval livery. That we would expect.
Jeffrey
15:49
No, it was painted green and it was accompanied by soldiers. It was painted black. Oh, I'm sorry. It was painted black, but it was on a vehicle painted green. Exactly. The naval livery would have been a blue painted truck with sailors. This was a green painted truck with soldiers.
Anne
16:06
All right. So question about... Well, interesting development is who, you know, what force is using it. But also, I'm excited about this missile because in the last few weeks of my employment. So you're working on a theory that the Pukuk Song 2 was a lot larger. Than everyone originally suspected. So when we saw. The Pukuk Song 3.
And then now the 4. Everyone's measurements. That they were working off of. And the control. That was the Pukuk Song 2. In terms of size. Has now thrown all those measurements off. But you know. What's actually going on. I think I know what's going on. Would you please debut your theory. Okay.
Jeffrey
16:56
All right. So there are this series of relatively large diameter solid propellant missiles called the Pukuk Song, which would distinguish them from a bunch of other solid propellant missiles that we've seen that don't have Pukuk Song names. The first, the Pukuk Song 1, was a submarine-launched ballistic missile. And at the time, I observed that the Chinese had gone through the same experience, and they pretty quickly moved to a land-based variant.
And I expected North Korea to do the same, and indeed they did. And they launched something called the Pukguksong-2. And everyone said that the Pukguksong-2 was just a land-based variant of the Pukguksong-1. But every time we tried to measure those two f***ing missiles, the Pukguksong-2 always came out being bigger. So for the Pukuk Song 1, we were getting like a meter and a half, which is pretty big.
But for the Pukuk Song 2, we were getting like 1.7 meters and change. And, you know, we didn't have like the world's greatest pictures of the Pukuk Song 2. We didn't, you know, the angles were weird. And so we were never really sure. But, you know... That's a big enough 20 centimeters. That's a big enough difference that we ought to be able to spot that using photogrammetry.
And so it was driving us crazy because even the panel of experts, the UN panel of experts says, well, you know, they're the same diameter. And we were just like, no, this doesn't make any sense. So then last year when North Korea launched the Pukguksong-3, the plot thickened because the Pukguksong-3 had exactly the same ratios as the two.
And now this struck me that we must be right that the two and the three are bigger because if you had a naval version and you made a land-based version, why would you then turn around and make another naval version of the land-based version of the naval missile? That's crazy. It made much more sense to say that the sea-based version begot a land-based version, right?
And the land-based version was bigger. So they're different missiles. They copied the land-based version back to the submarine program, which is the Pukuk Song 3. And now that we're looking at the 4, it appears to be, again, the same size as the 2 and 3 in terms of its diameter, but it's shorter. So when I measured it off the parade...
I got 1.7 meters and change depending on... Basically, depending on a couple of reference points. So it could be 1.73, 1.77. It's kind of hard. You can't really be all that precise. But my guess is that the... Two, three, and four are all basically the same diameter. And I don't know why the four is so much shorter.
Okay, I was going to ask that. It's like it's missing a stage.
Scott
19:59
And so that's, so basically the, the frame of reference would not be that the Pukuk Song one you mentioned, the Chinese example, is not the equivalent of the JL-1 going to the DF-21, which we thought would be the Pukuk Song two. That's right, they just skipped it. And basically the Pukuk Song one is a discarded garbage missile. It is going to be right, and which to be fair on the way, and the three is the C-based, and now the question is what's the four?
Yeah, why do they have this missile that is way shorter? Like, even if you don't do the measurements, I mean, like, I'm not a mincerationist. I don't do photogrammetry. I'm just there for sort of, like, ratios and basics. And it was clear that when the Pugaxe-4 came out, very short.
Jeffrey
20:40
Something's... Yeah, I mean, and it's got a base on it that looks like an ejection plate from a tube.
Scott
20:48
Right, which means it doesn't look like an upper stage. It looks like a... Maybe a full missile, albeit that the section that would house the RV still seems suspiciously small.
Anne
21:04
So we're not thinking that this could be like a first stage of something that we haven't... Well, it might be a... Oh, would it be the first stage of a solid fuel ICBM? It might be a second stage.
Jeffrey
21:14
Oh. Well, so here's the really important thing. Regardless of what this thing is, for the last year, I've been telling people that North Korea is probably much closer to launching a solid propellant ICBM than they realize. And the thing I'm always told is, well, they have to make a large diameter solid propellant missile first. And so I have been saying...
The Pukuk Sog 2 and 3 are 1.7 meters. They're already large diameter, solid propellant missiles. And, and then people are like, well, no, no, they aren't because the panel of experts says they're small, you know? And like, who are you hippie? And so now that we actually can see a nice, clean shot of one of these things, it really does look to me like they're big.
Wow. That's a big problem. And so regardless of what this thing is, whether it's a transitional system or whether it represents some specific crazy thing they have in mind that we haven't figured out yet... The day of the solid propellant ICBM is coming, but it wasn't, but it wasn't this parade, which we'll talk about why. You know, that's also a good thing, and maybe even cooler, weirder, wilder missile to show off. Yeah, we ready to talk about that now or are we done with the Pukuk Song for?
Scott
22:29
Two last notes on the Pakuk Song 4 and it'll be quick. One, a quick review of the time it takes states to go from a 1.5 diameter solid propellant missile to an ICBM flight stage outside the United States and the Soviet Union. The fastest so far has been 13 years, but we are measuring from 2015 at the latest.
And each time someone's tested, it's compressed, which means I think within the next two years, we're actually in, I think the jump would be seven to nine years. So I think we're no more than three to four years away from an ICBM. And if it was sooner, I would not be... Shocked? I would be surprised, would not be shocked though. And that's just for a flight test. So if they do ground tests, totally free game. This is just for flight testing. And then second off, so I'm, I'm with you that like tracks with the trajectories and is horrifying to me. second thing you mentioned, Put Cook Song 4A and Put Cook Song 4. Do we want to talk real quick about that? Just like two minutes.
Jeffrey
23:32
Sure, but I want to lodge a, it's not really a disagreement because everything you said was accurate, but you excluded the U.S. and the Soviet Union. And in the paper that I wrote, I looked at the experience with large diameter solid motors in the U.S. and the Soviet Union. And for them, the histories are pretty clear that for them, the kind of inflection point was between 1.5 and 1.7 meters.
That that was the big scale up. And once they got over that hump, you know, for the U.S. it was two years and for the Soviet Union it was three. Yep. So, you know, I have always said that if, I mean, if you are, if you are looking at a fast, the worst case is not a word I like, but the fast case would be two to three years from February 2017 when they tested the Pukuk Song 2, which means it could be here anytime.
Now, That's the fast case because the U S and the Soviet union were highly motivated to do it. And, and as we've seen, there's other stuff, the North Koreans like, but I just, I think people need to start getting their head around the idea that, that this is, Oh yeah.
Scott
24:46
Yeah. It'll be here soon, but it's, it's maybe haggling over months.
Jeffrey
24:51
Well, you know, the one thing that I would really, I know I say it all the time, but I think it's so important to keep in mind is there is when these things were developed, Yeah, there's when North Korea tests these things and then there's when North Korea shows us these things. Oh yeah, and in our brain we, we tend to compress all those, but you know, as we discovered with the Musudan, right? It deploys in the mid-2000s, they don't show it to us for a few years after that, and they don't test it for even a few years after that. Doesn't mean it didn't exist. it just meant that it was, it was off our radar screen, so.
You know, how far along are they in that solid propellant program? Have we actually seen every single missile, including intermediate missiles? Yeah, maybe not.
Scott
25:40
No, and we don't get every ground test.
Anne
25:43
Okay, so that ground, the engine test that we had earlier this year, that seemed like it could have been a stage test. Could that have been the Pukuk Song 4? Or is the time frame too compressed? Or is that engine test working up towards the solid fuel ICBM and not related to either the Pukuk Song 4 that we saw or definitely not related to the new ICBM that we did see?
Jeffrey
26:18
Well, since we saw a new huge liquid propellant missile, I'm going to guess that the thing we saw in December was the thing we should probably talk about now. Which is the Hwasong, I don't know what number you're going to give it.
Anne
26:32
Yeah, it doesn't have a designation yet.
Scott
26:34
No. People are calling it the 16, but that's not right. It's right now. It's the huge nuclear strategic force.
Anne
26:44
The Hwa song that never ends.
Jeffrey
26:46
Yeah, I'm guessing that the December test must have been this thing. Because if you put this thing at the end of the parade, my guess is it's got to fly at some point. And if it has to fly at some point, you probably need to do a couple of ground tests first. And they did those two in December.
So that's my guess.
Scott
27:10
I do have a very cynical disagreement with that, though. And that is that that's exactly what we would have thought about the KNO8 series. They have paraded two ICBMs prior that as far as we know, they have not actually flight tested, which would be the KNO8 and the KNO8 Mod 2. And that's exactly what I wanted to hear.
Jeffrey
27:31
But I think we know why. Okay. Yes. Right? I think we know why. I think we know that North Korea had a scud-based infrastructure that they tried to scale into an ICBM, which gave us the UNHA, which is a crappy ICBM. Yes. In the 90s, they shifted to the, what are they, 4D10s, the engines in the SS-N-6 submarine-launched ballistic missile.
And the Musudan never worked. And they were going to cluster those engines together in the KN-08 and the KN-13.
Jeffrey
28:02
But they could never get it to work. And then they got the RD-250. Yep. And my belief is that the huge nuclear weapon, whatever we're calling it, right? The KNXX or Chunky Boy or whatever.
Scott
28:18
Chungus Humongous.
Jeffrey
28:21
Chungus Humongous is a bundle of RD-250 engines. So it's either, and it's weird because each RD-250 engine, it's one pump and two thrust chambers. So, you know, so it's either four nozzles or six nozzles.
Anne
28:39
So when we eventually see the backside of this thing, it's going to be...
Scott
28:42
Complicated looking.
Jeffrey
28:44
Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's, and there's a little hint, which is the cover that they picked, instead of being a cover that covers all of the nozzles in the way, like a dome shape, which is what was on the Hwasong-15, I think.
Jeffrey
29:00
It's like a nipple.
Anne
29:01
Oh, like the Sarmat?
Jeffrey
29:04
It's what you see on Russian liquid-fueled ones when the nozzles are arrayed in an annular ring. Now that just might be them jerking us around and trying to make us think it's six instead of four, but One way or the other, you know, even if it's even if it's two RD250s, that's twice the thrust. And, you know, I mean, I actually finished modeling a version of it today and I come up with like, you know, 70 tons for the first stage.
Well, in terms of mass with, you know, like 60 some tons of propellant, it's like basically the same size as a DF-4, which is. Really big. That's very large. It's a little bigger than a DF-4, is the answer. It's kind of halfway between a DF-4 and a DF-5. So you know, yeah, but the DF-4 sucked. It didn't have the kind of performance to hit the continental US. In this one would.
Yeah, because the engine sucked. Because it didn't have an RD250.
Scott
30:04
Yeah, I just want to differentiate. It's a DF-4, but with a good engine. So it's a good DF-4.
Jeffrey
30:09
Yeah, like take something a little bigger than the DF-4 and put like a proper freaking engine in it. And, you know, I don't know. I've measured it a couple of times now. My numbers are a little lower than everybody else's. I'm coming in at about 2.4 meters. But, you know, that's enough for three warheads, maybe four, but probably three.
And, you know, just the first time I ran the numbers, and, you know, we'll be playing with it. I mean, none of these numbers are serious, but they could take three warheads anywhere in the United States. Also, Scott, you're going to love this. You know, the RD-250 was used in the R-36. The Soviet R-36. You know what the R-36 was used for, don't you? Scott's face. Oh my gosh, fobs.
Now that's, that's what the cluster of, that's a bundle of three. That is, I just, if the pay, just remember, just keep that in mind. But gets up by like, if the Patreon hits a next tier, I'll release the fobs episode mostly uncensored. I'm just saying. I'm, oh, I forgot about that. Pieces to go over the South Pole if they want. I think for now they're probably happy with multiple words. Okay.
Anne
31:27
Well, so now I have questions about this thing because I don't know if people were expecting to see an even larger liquid-fueled ICBM. So kind of.
Scott
31:43
Even larger than this? Well, no, no, no. Larger than the 15. No, like this. Like, what was the new thing this year? Larger than the 15. Yeah.
Anne
31:49
Like, we were all thinking that, like, next step would be solid-fueled ICBM, not an even larger liquid-fueled ICBM, that there are some questions.
Jeffrey
31:58
No, no, we definitely thought... You didn't? Okay. Because there was... Because, you know, the engine test in Sohei was a vertical test. Right. And, and so that, that, that argued that was might be liquid, which is, which is where that awful fobs episode came from that Scott won't release. Because we, we thought maybe if this thing is liquid, you know, that's a really long burn time, but then they may have stopped and restarted it.
I think But also, you know, in the weeks leading up to the parade, there were satellite images, which we didn't see because they weren't on the open side, but they were reported of an even larger launcher at the tell factory outside of Pyongyang.
Anne
32:40
Which is what we think that we saw in this parade. The 11-axle monstrosity. Yeah.
Scott
32:48
And there was also discussion over the last, if I remember correctly, about the last year. I know time is now hard to tell anymore because of the pandemic.
Jeffrey
32:55
But if I remember correctly... Time is a flat disc, Scott.
Scott
32:58
Time is a flat circle. I love that show. Don't do this to me. But there was also talk of, if I remember correctly, even throughout 2019, folks like Ankit Panda and whatnot mentioning the idea of a mobile space launcher, mysteriously throwing out there at the same time that they were conducting interesting interviews for their book that there was perhaps a very large TEL-based space infrastructure out there.
And I would just like to flag that, if I don't edit this part out, I'd like to flag that as essentially, Descriptive of what we saw, if, if not in purpose, certainly in what that would look like from space. An 11 axle tell like, for folks who have not looked at the pictures of this but are listening to the podcast, this thing is comedically large. It.
Anne
33:50
28 meters, 11 axles. Which builds into question. Looks like a cartoon. Like, how do you, like, what does it look like when you actually, like, raise it and fuel it? And, like, I mean, the thing's going to get bombed off the pad before it even gets launched. I don't know how you run this thing. Because it takes, what, like, theoretically half a day, a full day to fuel this thing?
So, like, what is the context?
Jeffrey
34:09
Well, I think you would have to fuel them in advance during a crisis. But you can't. Really slowly outside of your shelter and not go very far.
Scott
34:16
It's the rebuilding DF-4 infrastructure is what it sounds like, but just with pre-fueling, if they could pull that off without breaking it, and pre-fueling is going to be incredibly dangerous on something this big. I mean, this is rehashing the 15 discussion, but like...
Anne
34:29
I don't know. Maybe I'm not North Korean, so I don't know, and I don't run their missile programs. I cannot say one way or the other what I would do in that circumstance, but it seems... Interesting to me that that is where they would put their effort if the timing of getting something as big as that and the issues with potentially with with launching and readiness like.
Scott
34:58
Just confuses me. I don't understand this missile. We, we, I feel like in the last five years we've seen a lot of people have their different on ramps for missiles that kind of push them into the, the, the field of, I'm not sure I believe this. That what we're looking at is a launch system and I'm pretty close with this one. This makes me think that there are mel's for this. I just don't know how you make this work.
Anne
35:21
Sorry, hold on. This is, you can cut this out if this is a dumb question. When you say DF-5 infrastructure, were those the missiles that were in the caves that they would roll out and then erect and then launch?
Scott
35:31
DF-4s, but yeah, it's a rollout to launch. Yeah, they would literally be kept on a dedicated mill with sometimes light rail instead of wheels. And you roll it out like 40 feet. You roll it out essentially like twice the length.
Anne
35:42
That's what I would do if I were operating this particular missile. That's how I would base them.
Scott
35:48
I think that makes sense because you also don't have a ground support infrastructure because the DF-4s kept their fuel tanks on site so that they didn't have to always keep 400 goddamn trucks around to fuel it up. But we also know that the DF-4 rollout to launch sites sucked. The Chinese didn't like them. The PRC and the PLARF hated those.
That was a stopgap infrastructure choice that they kept on for legacy reasons and intentionally... Unless you combine that with a huge shell game, I don't know that it's much more survivable. And the PLARF did it with a shell game the size of China and didn't succeed.
Jeffrey
36:23
Yeah, I want to flash back to my China class because this is a thing that came up where the Chinese had the 4s and the 5s well underway by the late 70s, and they didn't like their basing modes. They didn't like silos. They didn't like roll out to launch. And so they looked at trying to put them in all kinds of other basing modes.
They looked at rail mobile basing and ship mobile basing. They looked at bridge static basing. All the stuff that makes Scott's heart a flutter. One of the things they did was they started developing a... Scaled down road mobile liquid propellant ICBM. That's exactly like this series of things because it's, it's not that it's a wonderful solution. I mean, obviously the best thing to do is to have a mobile solid propellant missile, but if you don't have that yet, then you know, there are plausible basing modes like you can, you know, yeah, you have the thing sitting in a garage.
The propellants are storable, right? They're not nice, but you can fuel the thing up at the beginning of a crisis. And while I don't think you can, like, go, like, you know, roaming through the wilds and trying to ford rivers, you can, at the right moment, disperse and go down roads and do what the Iraqis did. You know, the Iraqis hid under, like, overpasses, and, you know, they could build drive-through shelters.
And, you know, it's not... It's not an ideal solution for them. But, you know, if every one of these things has three warheads on it, and, you know, so let's say they build 12 of these things. And it looks like they could build a lot now because they don't seem to be constrained anymore by transporter production. Oh, you can't just drop that in the last couple minutes.
Well, we can talk about Tomo's story, which I think is a great thing to discuss. You know, 36 warheads. Okay, so if they build 12 and you get 10 of them, if you miss two, that's six warheads. It's not a good day.
Scott
38:27
It's not the ideal strategic solution, but you don't go to nuclear war with the arsenal you want. You deter with the arsenal you have.
Jeffrey
38:39
By the way, I think that is an undiscussed... This is something we should discuss that we haven't, which is last year, Tomo Inoue at Kyoto News reported that North Korea had started a mass production campaign for... Transporter erector launchers including for ICBMs, and that they were allocating money to make as many as 70 transporter erector launchers. Yeah, and they were going to try to import parts from abroad so they weren't, it wasn't like the Chinese situation where they were buying whole chassis. They were trying to buy components and parts and do more of the assembly in North Korea. And I, I would just say looking at the new tells we saw as well as some of the other stuff.
A lot of vehicles, a lot of vehicles we haven't seen before. So I'm guessing... Oh, and also the Telefactory got a big expansion.
Anne
39:32
Okay, that was going to be my next question. So I, you know, I...
Jeffrey
39:37
Think the old days where transporter erector launcher production was the the the choke point may be over and the reason i find that really interesting is whenever i look at u.s intelligence assessments on the open side that are published the number of north korean missiles is almost always set to the number of launchers we've seen in a parade And if that methodology ceases to be a reliable indicator of numbers, you could see estimates of the arsenal go up, I think, pretty fast.
Anne
40:09
Wow. Okay, so big stuff coming for North Korea. And things to look out for. I know you all will be combing satellite imagery for... Other infrastructure expansions because that turning radius on that honker is. I don't... Very large. So you'd have to have bigger roads. So, you know, that's something to... They must put these somewhere already. So, you know...
It's a challenge. Thinking about where those are stored.
Scott
40:49
They don't have the national infrastructure that lends themselves to these, which was one of the curious notes on it. You're exactly correct. So, very exciting parade. We'll miss you, Anne.
Anne
41:03
Ah, shit. Well, as always, it's been an absolute pleasure. And I'm not disappearing, so, you know, take heart. I'll be around.
Scott
41:17
I think for your last official episode, it would be appropriate for you to close out the episode from memory without looking up the Patreon URL. So good luck. And I'm just going to put the music on for whatever you say.
Anne
41:32
Okay. If you liked what we talked about, then head on over to our Patreon, which is at www.patreon.com slash ACW podcast. And if you like to donate to keep this content coming and to get access to the Arms Control Wonk Slack channel. You can sign up for $5 a month if you are a regular person and $3 a month if you are a student.
And with that, this is my last time signing off. It's been fun. It's been an absolute honor. And I wish the next co-host the best of luck with you guys.
