All Aboard the Missile Train

Jeffrey Lewis 0:18

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Scott LaFoy 0:34

And I'm Scott LaFoy, super producer at the Arms Control Wonk Podcast and program manager for national security and intelligence at Exeger Federal Solutions. Hey, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey 0:44

Hey, Scott, this is kind of an emergency podcast.

Scott 0:48

It is. You slept very much this week, man? No. No, I have f***ing not. Like you said off pod, this cannot, this cannot be our September.

Jeffrey 0:58

No, no, no. We did. No, I'm if this is the rest of my September's, I'm going to like law school or something. This is I am freaking exhausted.

Scott 1:07

We cannot have this be the reaction to every North Korean missile test, because if we do another 2017, we're just all going to die of exhaustion before we die from the nuclear fire.

Jeffrey 1:19

Yeah. You know, I, I am just, I like, I like wake up at five o'clock in the morning because I am an old person with a small bladder has been trained by little children. So I just, I try to go back to sleep, but God help me if I ever look at my phone.

Scott 1:37

Oh, that's just game over. That's how they, that's how they get you. But let's talk about how they got us. What the hell happened to this week? Where do we even start?

Jeffrey 1:48

I don't know, should we go through the list before we even start talking about things?

Scott 1:53

Yeah, let's give a table of contents for the listeners and then let's start attacking the missiles.

Jeffrey 1:58

Okay, so as I understand it, Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea, was on his way to the Agency for Defense Development in order to watch a bunch of stuff that we'll list. But before he got there, North Korea tested a KN-23 off a choo-choo train. A pair of KN23s off a choo-choo train.

Scott 2:23

The traditional way of firing them, which is crazy. I have not seen train basing. We've seen in the 90s, we saw train basing with the Russian Molodets ICBM, and we've seen the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison, and we know the DF-41 ICBM is maybe playing with rail garrisons, but this is a, I guess it's technically an MRBM train,

Jeffrey 2:46

At the ranges that the North Koreans claimed or yeah, 800 kilometers so we get we can either talk about that or we can if you want to talk about that or do you want to go into the List of oh, sorry, let's have great side list.

Scott 3:00

Yes, so we had a choo-choo train Launch while moon Jane was going to a DD and once he got to a DD though He responded in kind

Jeffrey 3:10

Yeah, it was the smorgasbord. There was, by my count, a stealthy air-launched cruise missile. Yep. A submarine-launched ballistic missile. Yep. A supersonic anti-ship cruise missile. A test of the Hyunmoo 4, I guess with the 4 medium-range ballistic missile, probably. And a static engine test of a large-diameter solid propellant motor.

Scott 3:36

Which we have video of for all of these.

Jeffrey 3:39

That's right. And then, just because that's not enough, Dave Schmerler and Josh Pollack and I were looking at Young Beyond. And it appears in the last two weeks that the North Koreans have started construction on an extension to their gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant, which will increase the capacity of the plant at Yongbyon by about 25% if it's filled with centrifuges.

Scott 4:11

So listeners, this is going to be quite the episode, and that's in addition to the land attack cruise missile test that the North Koreans did earlier this week, see previous episode, and the boiling fish at Yongbyon episode, what was it, one to two weeks ago, where Yongbyon had a reprocessing campaign detected. This is warming up to be the winter of our collective discontent.

Jeffrey 4:36

And we're not even going to talk about the plan to sell Australia nuclear-powered submarines with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.

Scott 4:46

Because I have to sleep. I forgot about that. Yeah, we'll put a pin in that one for another episode.

Jeffrey 4:55

So I think it makes sense for us just to focus on the burgeoning arms race on the Korean Peninsula. Burgeoning. Burgeoning.

Scott 5:06

Yeah so let's let's keep it peninsular the hype train ain't got no brakes but the kn23 train does in fact have brakes why is this weird jeffrey why does it matter that they launched it from a choo-choo why has thomas the tank engine gone rogue

Jeffrey 5:26

So I actually, I don't think it's weird. I think it makes a lot of sense for them. And I was crowing on Twitter because a couple of years ago, I forced Dave to look at the Wansan Rolling Stock plant, I guess. And then after Joe Bermudez did a little write-up of the Wonsan rolling stock plant, which mentioned that it made train cars, I, on Twitter, pointed out that there had been open source reports that they were considering railbasing.

And I guess the answer is it makes a lot of sense for the North Koreans because we have spent a lot of time looking at their launcher production. And we know that they are spending a lot of money importing components, thanks to a report by Tomo Inoue in Kyoto News. A lot of money importing components to make wheeled launchers.

We're pretty sure that they're not getting the results they want from that because we've seen them do tracked launchers. But tracked launchers are undesirable for lots of reasons, which is to say they can go off-road, but they're just not very fast. And they have a hell of a signature. And they're expensive. They take a lot of gas.

Yeah. A train, on the other hand. I mean, that's just a stock car. You can use any old engine. North Korea's got lots of railways. They got lots of railroad tunnels, which conveniently double as shelters. I think it makes a lot of sense for them as a way of diversifying their launch vehicles.

Scott 7:02

Yeah, well, and like you said, I think diversification is a good word for it. I think also provide, like you said, the alternative to expensive, complex wheeled vehicles that they've been having trouble with. And I think from a deterrence perspective, like, you know, the reason that railbasing makes sense with ICBMs is those same reasons. But it provides a means of hiding your deterrent.

You get your shell game off in the tunnels and whatnot. But if your deterrent is just across the street and not across the continent, it makes sense to do this with shorter range systems.

Jeffrey 7:34

Yeah, I agree. And I would say that when I look at North Korea, I mean, I think the rail network is probably in better shape than the road network.

Scott 7:42

That's not I can tell you that is no question in my mind. That's true.

Jeffrey 7:46

So you're accessing a much better transportation network. You're giving yourself the ability to move those things at much higher speeds. And there are a fuck ton of railroad tunnels. Oh, my God. When North Korea tested that short range ballistic missile in front of a road tunnel. We actually the fact that it was a tunnel made it kind of easy to find because there just aren't that many high quality roads with tunnels because normally you would build a road around, you know, like, yeah, there's some.

But like, do you want to go pin every railroad tunnel in North Korea?

Scott 8:26

No, I'm ready to say they've won this one. They can have this one. I saw a couple people poking fun at it on Twitter because it looks silly. This is the first one of these we've ever seen. I think it's also important to draw a line between what is a really good deterrent investment and what's a good during-the-war investment because I do think this is silly for one of those things and fantastic for another of those things.

Because I think people are right. This doesn't survive contact with an actual conflict necessarily. That'd be kind of hard because we do know where those tunnels are. But it's a good deterrent because this is going to stay hidden until they need it, which makes it a good deterrent.

Jeffrey 9:09

Yeah, you know, I think the one thing I would say is that if they are imagining a scenario where they use nuclear weapons first... I do think it gives them some options, right? Because they could flush stuff out of bases. And if they do that in the right way, I do think that just as we're looking at like, well, maybe they're going to preempt, maybe they're not.

Should we try to go first? You know, if there is a point at which the just number of railroad tunnels combined with all the other stuff, I mean, it might cause us to hesitate.

Scott 9:54

Would you say, Jeffrey, that they're running another shell game with tunnels?

Jeffrey 10:02

Yeah, I mean, happily, the shells are already there, right? Exactly. Yeah, they're not going to build a train in every tunnel, but by God.

Scott 10:11

And you don't go to war with the shells you want. You go to war with the shells you have, and they're making a real good... They're making a lot of what they have. This is something that we've had in back channels on Analyst for a while. Trains make sense. They'd be weird. I did not expect them to be SRBMs or MRBMs, admittedly.

I thought this would be an ICBM capability if it did ever come out, but...

Jeffrey 10:31

You know, there's still time. Oh yeah, I don't think they're done. I mean, no point. Yeah, I don't, you know, like, have you ever known anybody to build a model train set and stop it? Just one train? I mean, this is like the world's... Kim Jong-un has the world's awesomest model train. Oh my god.

Scott 10:53

So that's one capability. This is the first one. It is a survivable, strong deterrent message and mixed with that quasi-ballistic. If it is the KN-23, it's got that quasi-ballisticness to it, which means that it's going to be a nightmare for ballistic missile defenses.

Jeffrey 11:09

Well, it flew 800 kilometers with an apogee of 60 kilometers. It was reported it did a pull-up maneuver. And we actually did a little... In-center visual inspection, and I made everybody look at the KN-23, the 2.5-ton warhead variant of the KN-23, and then the thing that was launched from the train. I had everyone privately record what they thought it was, and we all agree that the stack or the booster for the missile that was launched is the shorter version that we see on the KN-23, not the stretched version we see on the...

The two and a half ton warhead variant. So I think, you know, it is what it is, right?

Scott 11:51

So survivable and good at defeating BMD, leveraging their economy, leveraging their infrastructure. Oh, it's quintessentially and potentially on, according to Dutzman, a Russian train. Quintessential.

Jeffrey 12:11

This is not my observation. I don't remember who made it on Twitter. But do you remember when the Moon administration, as part of the peace diplomacy, wanted to help North Korea improve the quality of its rail infrastructure?

Scott 12:27

I had forgotten that, Jeffrey. I had forgotten that.

Jeffrey 12:31

And those evil war maniacs at USFK were like, no f***ing way you do that. I think someone owes them an apology.

Scott 12:42

I just want so much to be declassified so I can know who knows what when. No, I had forgotten that.

Jeffrey 12:50

Okay. I think the Moon administration owes USFK an apology. I mean, just imagine if they had spent a couple billion dollars re-kidding all of North Korea's railways as part of the peace diplomacy only for it to fall apart and this bad boy to come rolling out. And so in response, having seen this glorious test, yes and I don't know if there's actual... I don't, I don't know if it's actually causative, but certainly at the same time it's not causative because there was a pre-recorded thing. I, I was, I was contacted by multiple individuals in Korea who gave me a heads up that Moon was going to go to a test of an SLBM that day.

And I have been told that he was actually in the car on the way, although maybe that's a little bit of artistic license, when he was told about the North Korean test. So my understanding is the smorgasbord of defense programs we're about to talk about, this was all planned long in advance.

Scott 13:58

Oh, which means it could still be causative just the other way around. This could be a North Korean reaction.

Jeffrey 14:05

Yeah, or, you know, I mean, Kim Jong, well, Kim Yo Jong and then Kim Jong Chol were all pretty clear after the military exercises, right, as we discussed in the episode that should have been called Let's Get Crack-A-Lack-Em.

Scott 14:19

I liked Let's Get Crack-A-Lack-Em.

Jeffrey 14:21

They were pretty clear that we're in for it now. Now, don't get me wrong, like, this shit is also going to draw another response from the North Koreans.

Scott 14:30

Oh, yeah, this is where it

Jeffrey 14:33

All right. Well, what do you want to talk about on the list of South Korean programs? Like I said, we got the outcome, the SLBM, supersonic cruise missile, Hyunmoo 4, and the static engine test of the large diameter solid propellant rocket, which I think is for a space launcher. But, you know, as Werner Von Braun, you know, as was said about Werner Von Braun, I aim for the stars, but sometimes I hit London.

Scott 15:04

Let's go in order of what we would probably think is the most exciting because I can't imagine people want to sit through necessarily solid motor test when South Korean conventional SLBM is on the menu.

Jeffrey 15:15

Okay, well, I'll tell you what. Why don't we just cross the static motor test off? The nice thing there is I don't think I've ever seen a video of a South Korean static motor test. And I'm pretty sure I know where those test stands are. I'll geolocate it, put it on Twitter. That's nifty, but it's done. Yeah, thank you.

Scott 15:34

And like you said, ostensibly for space TBD, weird time to be talking about space capabilities in a video full of other missile activities.

Jeffrey 15:41

So, well, it's ADD, you know, they're busy.

Scott 15:46

Would you suggest that ADD can't stay focused? Okay, so SLBM. The Hyunmoo, allegedly, I think it was Yeonhap that calls it the Hyunmoo 4, which Ankit Panda harassed me about.

Jeffrey 15:59

I have no idea what the F that means.

Scott 16:01

Yeah, and according to Ankit, at least it is a Hyunmoo 2B derivative, so f*** me. Like, I don't know how to track that. That's insane to me. So I don't know why it's called a 4. We're going to refer to it as the South Korean SLBM because at least for now there appears to only be one.

Jeffrey 16:15

I mean, one of the issues that we have is we think that the... The Hyunmoo 2 variants are not all the same sized. Like they all have the same name, but that's a little bit to like make us feel better about their rapidly growing missile program. And so they're really, when you have a different diameter, it's really a different missile.

So I think with Hyunmoo 4, they're just kind of finally admitting that they have a larger diameter variant of the Hyunmoo 2. Although I got in a big argument with Decker, Eveleth, where we tried to work out what the NHK variants, what the U.S. and South Korean designations, how they match up.

Scott 17:02

Ooh, that's a hard one.

Jeffrey 17:03

Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, it wasn't like, oh, there were fisticuffs involved. I mean, nothing like that, but... It's confusing. But SLBM.

Scott 17:12

Yeah. This is the world's first, if they operationalize it and they currently are on track to, this will be the world's first conventional SLBM. Caveated, there have been test conventional SLBMs, but that's not really what we're talking about. We're talking about them putting that to sea with the intent of it going on patrol.

Jeffrey 17:32

Right. So what to say?

Scott 17:38

Well, so first off, I think a first one would be this makes everyone uncomfortable for a very obvious, I think, reason. And that is that it is the only conventional program and it is located in a country that has in the past pursued nuclear weapons and is in, I'd say, a pretty rough neighborhood nuclear weapons and missile wise, which makes people suspicious that this stays a conventional capability.

Jeffrey 18:04

Yeah. South Korea has built a nuclear triad. They just haven't gone ahead and built any nuclear weapons for the triad. And that's like a little like, Oh, okay. Well then. Yeah. I think that's, I think you're right that that is, that is the kind of eyebrow raising aspect of this because it doesn't make a lot of sense to me as a conventional capability.

You know, like, we can talk about other possible motives for doing this, but it is so expensive to put these things on submarines. And, like, what are you getting? A wider array of launch azimuths?

Scott 18:52

Yeah, the only true strategic strike package option I could torture out of it is this is a way to counter south side basing equivalents in North Korea, so you can hit those. But that's a lot of money you're pouring in for something we can do other ways.

Jeffrey 19:07

Yeah, and I mean, okay, so they're pretty invulnerable, but first... Do we believe that the South Koreans are planning on going second? Like if if Kim Jong-un pushes the button and nukes the crap out of South Korea. Do we actually think that the plan is then to like use a bunch of conventional missiles to try to dig him out of bunkers?

Because that's not going to work. Right. Like they're pretty accurate. And now they have a two two ton warhead on some of them. But I mean, two tons of explosives is not that much. Right. It's that's hitting a bunker with two V2s. Well, yeah, it's like this system makes sense if the plan is to kill Kim Jong Un before he gives the order.

Scott 20:05

And then there's always the other aspirational Washington excitement of, ooh, is this for the North Koreans, really? Because missiles don't discriminate. Deterrence doesn't necessarily discriminate, despite what STRATCOM sometimes claims their plans don't cover. But I struggle with this one. Unless there's one of those, like, oh, in 20 years we get some declassified stuff that says there's some weird institutional biases or inertia that pushed this because of parochial concerns.

This one's real hard to suss out strategically. Yeah.

Jeffrey 20:39

Well, look, I mean, I, I think missiles are penises, and the Navy likes to have a penis. Like, I just, I think every Navy. Every Navy wants a standoff strike capability. And I think it probably just a prompt to stand off strike capability. And I think it just probably sucks for the Navy that the army has toys that they don't have.

And I think further, it sucks for the South Korean Navy that the North Koreans have these toys. And like, I'm mocking it. And like, I'm, you know, being a jackass because that's what I do. But like, I also get it. I mean, would you really want the head of your Navy to be like, you know, give us some patrol boats.

We don't really have any role to play in this war. We'll hang out. It's fine. You would be like, OK, I'm like. Seriously, get somebody else in this job. So I think as a policymaker, I would look at this and be like, this is kind of a waste of money. I kind of don't begrudge the South Korean Navy for wanting to make this happen.

Scott 21:46

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey 21:49

I'm just hoping they keep it, don't nuke this one up. Like, this one, this one makes me very... Yeah, they might nuke this one up. Yeah, I mean, one, South Korea had a nuclear weapons program. Yep. Two, that program existed into the 1980s and may have existed in at least some form through the end of their safeguards violations in 2002. Yep.

And three, there are South Korean politicians who call for nuclear armament in a way that is much more common and routine than it then is true in Japan. So, you know, I am someone who is extremely skeptical that Japan will ever build nuclear weapons. I do not have that same level of confidence about South Korea. It is a different animal altogether.

Yeah.

Scott 22:41

Oh, yeah, that one. This one makes me nervous. I really hate that the thing that you just pointed out that they have a non nuclear nuclear triad because I had not actually drawn those lines. Which brings us to the other part, the outcome. Yeah, the stealthy-looking Alchem. Stealthy-looking Alchem. A little boxy f***er. So they have what they are clearly showing off to be a low-radar cross-section, some pretty precise air-launched cruise missile.

Because apparently we're doing that now.

Jeffrey 23:21

Yeah, you know, it... I mean... They indicated that it's their own thing. To me, it looks a lot visually like the Taurus, which is the Swedish-German one which they operate.

Scott 23:41

Coincidence, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey 23:45

Yeah, I mean, all these things do kind of look alike for a reason, right? And and there had been a couple of years ago when they announced that they were going to develop an outcome. They said that they were going to derive the technology from the Taurus. So, you know, it looks so much like a Taurus. And I honestly haven't had the time to really look at it.

I don't know how derivative it is. But, you know, I mean, you know, I, you know, I guess the Germans and the Swedes won't be selling any more cruise missiles to South Korea.

Scott 24:20

Oh, yeah, I'm sure they're going to they're going to pass that one up. It also is interesting to me, at least by staying conventional and staying relatively below the not below the radar anymore. Ha ha. We can't use that twice in a row, though. Yeah. We know that much like Turkey, South Korea bats above its weight in terms of arms production and military procurement.

I'd be really curious to see if this outcome or the SLBM show up elsewhere.

Jeffrey 24:53

Oh, you mean as arms sales?

Scott 24:55

Yeah. Like I know that the SLBM would be a particular problem to sell. But like this is this is me now being curious if we're going to see either submarine based or ship launched solid propellants out of Turkey, out of, you know, Australia.

Jeffrey 25:11

I definitely think the outcome is a thing they could sell because it replicates a system that is widely marketed. You know, the SLBM, like just that whole Hyunmoo solid propellant missile series. I mean, how strong is the norm against missile proliferation anymore?

Scott 25:35

And there's people they could sell it to internal, like if memory serves, you can sell within the MTCR.

Jeffrey 25:42

Yeah, I mean, it's more a norm than anything else. But, I mean, in a universe where Russia has sold the Iskander to Algeria and to Armenia, and where China is selling its own short-range solid propellant missiles to, you know, Turkey and Qatar and... We have whatever the hell they're doing in Saudi Arabia, which I suspect is probably an Iskander variant.

The Grom, which is the Ukrainian version of it. I shouldn't call it an Iskander variant, but the Ukrainian copy of the Russian missile. I mean, does there come a point at which like, I don't know, UAE or somebody is like, we want to buy some of these. And the Russians are offering to sell it. The Chinese are offering to sell it.

And the South Koreans are like, hey, how about us?

Scott 26:37

One of those can get you fewer State Department reprimands, though. I can imagine there being some economic intrigue going on around this. President can waive those sanctions.

Jeffrey 26:50

And, you know, given that, not that we're going to talk about it, but we seem to be in the business of making significant exceptions for important allies at the moment. Can't, can't do it. We got too many things to cover. We cannot talk about the Three Eyes right now. All right, well, all we have left to talk about is the Hyunmoo 4 and the the supersonic anti-ship cruise missile.

Scott 27:16

Yeah, well, in the Hyunmoo 4, I feel like... So first off, commonality of those, they appear to be launched from roughly the same position in the video. The launch location for those was about the same, it looked like.

Jeffrey 27:27

Yeah, it's an island off the coast where ADD is located. And so in the past, Park Geun-hee and then Moon Jae-in have both sat in a nice conference room and looked out over the water and watched the missiles go. It's... Seems like it'd be nice. I'm just saying, if any South Korean officials want to invite me for a missile test, I promise I'll say nice things about how awesome it was, how great the bulgogi was at launch. So accurate anti-ship missile, supersonic looks faster than the North Koreans one, but hard to tell. what's... Yeah, they flew it through a, like a, like a white sheet suspended on top of a boat. I didn't want to, didn't want to ruin the boat.

Scott 28:12

Yeah, I was kind of impressed. I mean, normally when with listeners, normally when you see these anti-ship cruise missile tests, they will outfit a boat with radar reflectors. So it's very easy to see. And then they will pummel it with this missile. And yeah, they basically put like a giant soccer net up for the for a pretty sweet goal.

And it just passes. Goal! Oh, it's very unfortunate that this is the last episode of this podcast ever now. Oh, God. But so they did a sweet test. It was a, I mean, it was a supersonic anti-ship cruise missile launched from the land. It looks like it could probably be modified pretty easily for sea launch as well.

Maybe air launch, TBD on that one. Going towards just a...

Jeffrey 29:04

I mean, I don't know why you wouldn't, right?

Scott 29:06

Yeah.

Jeffrey 29:08

I mean, it's in a canister. Yep.

Scott 29:12

The big commonality with so much of these tests, stealthy outcome excluded, is a lot of this is canisterized, and I'm really curious what if the, the other backbone of this is South Korea moving towards a really interesting question is have the South Koreans considered putting one of these on a bullet train? Oh my god, wouldn't that be awesome?

That's what we're going to see next is the ADD's train that launches Hyunmoo-4s and anti-ship cruise missiles. And we're just going to never see the end to this.

Jeffrey 29:48

That's it.

Scott 29:49

We're going to really see defense innovation in South Korea is going to be driven by just completely bizarre investments in North Korea.

Jeffrey 29:59

I mean, it's bad, but it's kind of good, right?

Scott 30:04

I mean, the podcast keeps going. I would at this point request ADD just does a direct Patreon investment in the pod as well as that that missile launch invite. So let's let's knock off the Hyunmoo because we're running long and we got uranium to talk about and we got a lot of uranium to talk about.

Jeffrey 30:22

Good God. Well, this one, I think, is pretty straightforward. Yeah. In January, Kim Jong-un said that North Korea was going to push ahead with the production, magic word, of super large warheads. Yes. And by super large warheads, he meant thermonuclear weapons, right? And so the thing they showed us, remember the peanut was a staged thermonuclear weapon. That secondary stage, the secondary, has to have a bunch of HEU, like a lot.

So for example, like the Mark 47, the Polaris warhead, had 60 kilograms of HEU in its secondary. So that just gives you a sense of like the neighborhood you're looking at, like several tens of kilograms. You know, maybe less if you want to bring the yield down. But still, like it's a lot. And that's a really a lot compared to what you'd have in a primary.

Right. So, you know, I don't know. I keep seeing, you know, the significant quantity is 25 kilograms. But, you know, the Chinese did quite a bit less than that.

Scott 31:28

Yeah. Get away with the less.

Jeffrey 31:31

Especially if you're putting like, you know, doing a composite pill with plutonium. But the point is, you know, while you've got, I would say, you know, I mean, the Iraqis were at like 15 kilograms. And, you know, in advanced states, probably going to be lower than that. So let's call it 10. We're rounding. Maybe we're rounding up.

Maybe we're rounding down. Call it 10. You know, you're looking at like almost an order of magnitude more for a big secondary pill. Then that just requires more weapons-grade uranium production. And so, you know, we're watching Kangsong. You know, stuff is going on there. And we were watching Yongbyon. And Dave Schmerler noticed that right next to the two enrichment halls, the North Koreans cleared some ground.

And then we watched them put up a wall. Enclosing an area and they put a foundation down and they took the wall panels off the, off the enrichment facility to connect them. Oh great, okay. And so we got, we got Max R got the pretty pictures actually from the right angle. It was beautiful picture. and you know, I mean, you just at that point you just measure the floor space. It's 25 percent bigger, and You typically floor space just scales, you know, so if there's 25 percent more floor space, it's typically 25 percent more capacity.

That's a lot. It's a lot. Even assuming they're still running the same more aging steel P2 type centrifuges that they showed Sig Hecker 11 years ago. And if they've improved those centrifuges at all, it's even more.

Scott 33:12

Yeah.

Jeffrey 33:14

Which I think they're doing because they want to make more uranium for their thermonuclear secondaries.

Scott 33:20

And I just told Kelsey Atherton that there is more missile than fissile in North Korea, and now they're trying to make a fool of me. They've done it.

Jeffrey 33:32

Yeah, well, I mean, it's not your fault, but I would say that the decision to do a reprocessing campaign in the spring... Mm-hmm. And then over the summer to restart the plutonium production reactor. And now to expand Yongbyon, the enrichment plant, I mean, it looks like they're ramping up fissile material production. I will tell you, we are keeping an eye on everything now.

There is stuff changing at Kangsan that has our attention. Oh, no. Okay. We're staring at the 50 megawatt reactor, which one of our colleagues at Open Nuclear Network noticed has, you know, there's some modest stuff happening there. So we're like... We're ready. We're ready for there to be big changes at Kangsan. We're ready for them to restart rebuilding that 50 megawatt reactor.

I don't know what's coming next, but it does seem to me like they are simultaneously expanding fissile material production while testing a bunch of new missiles. Still haven't gotten our solid propellant ICBM yet, so stay tuned.

Scott 34:42

There's still a couple more months left in the year, though.

Jeffrey 34:45

And they haven't tested the big boy. Yeah, they have not.

Scott 34:50

I'm really curious if we are going to see that just massive ICBM go off. I like to think that it's so large that one of the reasons they're going to trains is they have actually just broken all their tails at this point.

Jeffrey 35:03

I mean, while we say that missile is extremely large, right? It is not large compared to truly large ICBMs. Correct. But it is freaking giant to carry around on a truck.

Scott 35:15

Yeah. It is an obscene...

Jeffrey 35:18

Yeah, sorry, go ahead. That thing just does not make a ton of sense as a vehicle. No. Born... So I do think that... You know, I think it quite clearly conveyed something to us. And, you know, they may test it. I'm not saying they're not going to. But I can absolutely see them wanting to get on with the business of solid propellant ICBMs.

And if they're really, really large, you know, sea basing and rail basing strike me as being not a bad idea for them.

Scott 35:56

Happy note. Happy note. Trains are cool.

Jeffrey 36:02

I love trains. I'm an Amtrak guy. I love riding on trains. I mean, I won't lie. If Kim Jong-un, you know, was like, do you want to ride the choo-choo with me? I would be like, yeah, give me the white bunny suit. Let's go. I'm way more fun than Dennis Rodman.

Scott 36:23

Oh, God. It's the party train now. It is just the party train. I am going to rewatch GoldenEye sometime after this, I think, because that's the proper headspace to be in for this weapon. That counts as a happy note, I think. If the listeners would like to continue to support our antics and fund our eventual one-way trip on the North Korean party train, they can go kick us a few dollars over at patreon.com slash acwpodcast, where for $3 a month, if you are a student, preferably with a .edu email, but we know how that goes if you're not in the United States, or Or $5 a month if you are a normal person not attached to an academic institution.

You can get access to our Slack channel and the wonderful, beautiful, weird people within who are constantly doing things like pushing the envelope of what I consider safe to do with missile technology in one's garage and pushing the limits of open source methodologies. It's a pretty sweet crew of people.

Jeffrey 37:33

I have three different... Research projects underway with people in the Slack channel who are just psyched about the shit they're seeing.

Scott 37:44

And when those research projects do come to fruition, they end up being in The Economist and The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, which is pretty sweet. I know that's always a cool thing to show up in. Man.

Jeffrey 38:02

You know, one of the number one things I get asked, Scott, is how do I get started in this field? And while I never say give me $5 a month, I do actually think a correct answer is join communities like our Slack channel and meet everybody in the field and show them what you can do and good things will follow.

Scott 38:23

Jeffrey, it has been an absolute pleasure joining you. I know I only get to come in every now and then due to schedules, but I appreciate the North Koreans and the South Koreans completely f***ing up our week in sleep schedule so that we could do this pod. And I look forward to it next week again.

Jeffrey 38:38

Good to talk to you, Scott.