North Korea’s New Satellite

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

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

Aaron Stein 0:19

And I'm Aaron Stein, chief content officer at War on the Rocks. Jeffrey, it's good to see you again.

Jeffrey 0:27

It's good to be here, although we're going to have to change the introduction. Because we're not, it's not a lot of talk about non-proliferation or arms control. And there's definitely no talk about disarmament. It's just all proliferation, arms racing, and, you know, fun stuff going on.

Aaron 0:49

Maybe we could do like a riff on F1 because that's having a moment because of the Netflix series, which I've never watched. But maybe we're just racing. We're the racing podcast. Racing to the oblivion. Or racing to the Armageddon.

Jeffrey 1:01

Yeah, there's an article going around saying like, no, you shouldn't use the term arms race. And while I do think that arms races are like a grossly oversimplified term, I also feel like it's gaslighting.

Aaron 1:16

Are you plugging my website, warontherocks.com?

Jeffrey 1:19

Wait, was that published at your website, warontherocks.com?

Aaron 1:23

I would say I was the editor of that piece.

Jeffrey 1:26

Oh, I just saw the headline and I looked at the authors. Bruno Tertre was suggesting his piece on the very same topic. And I think that's a useful corrective. Although this is still a f***ing arms race. Come on.

Aaron 1:44

Look, I think that it's pretty clear what a lot of people are talking about, even if there's no agreed upon definition of what it actually is. It means people are building up new capabilities and there's no caps or restraints on what it is that you can build.

Jeffrey 1:58

We're not here, though, to talk about arms races. We're here to talk about...

Aaron 2:05

The exploration of outer space. It's totally peaceful.

Jeffrey 2:09

In the Juche era.

Aaron 2:11

It's totally peaceful. You know, what I really like about all North Korean propaganda images, and that's what they are of their space launches, is I like to look at the rocket and it's sort of like in sort of of the region and Made to look sort of an Asian aesthetic NASA. Like they sort of decals, they put onto it the paint, and I like it.

I think it's a cool look.

Jeffrey 2:37

I don't know. See, I love back when JAXA used to do their own JAXA logo, the Japan Space Exploration Agency, which looked like the old NASA worm. I want to bring back the worm. I don't like this, like, New Jack meatball stuff going on. I like the worm. That's my NASA logo.

Aaron 3:01

I think Kim Jong-un's been having too much of the worm in his tequila because that guy looks rough for his age.

Jeffrey 3:06

He really is not looking great. I gotta say, I'm a little nervous about the man's health. We had a long discussion about how old he was. I thought he was in his mid-40s. And you told me it's his late 30s. And it's like, that guy's been eating the worm. It might be early 40s now. I got to go back and look.

Whatever it is. I think he was born in. Whatever it is. I think he was born in like 83, 84. So, you know, that's not that old. He's my age. Oh, so he's ancient. He's ancient. That's right. When it starts breaking down. Look, okay. So obviously, listeners, we are going to talk about North Korea's apparently successful launch of a clearly identified as military imaging satellite.

I was being a little a little sarcastic when I talked about the peaceful uses of outer space. But North Korea launched an imaging satellite and they're real happy about it. And, you know, people are freaking out and, you know, like we should probably we should probably talk about it.

Aaron 4:11

Yeah, I think this was the third attempt to get a satellite into synchronous orbit. And I think that this is the first one where It hasn't become regularly apparent basically almost immediately from the launch that the test or that the launch was a failure.

Jeffrey 4:31

Yeah, the North Koreans say it worked and all the available evidence would suggest that it worked, although the available evidence is not enough to reach that conclusion independently. But, you know, like I think it probably it probably works.

Aaron 4:48

Yes, or at least it's in, it's a sun synchronous orbit, right? Yeah, that's right. Because, you know, imaging satellites need light. That's about to say you probably want the light behind you, just like you're taking a picture. But, you know. I mean, you don't got no light. You don't got no picture. That's right. Unless you're using something else.

That was the Illinois. That was the rural Illinois in me coming out.

Jeffrey 5:13

Ain't got no light. God damn it.

Aaron 5:16

Well, when the pictures first came out, this starts flying around in certain communities. What were your thoughts on it?

Jeffrey 5:26

I'll tell you, before we get to the pictures, we should give a shout-out to the Arms Control Wonk Slack community because the ionospheric detection tool worked like a charm. So, Tyler and Mike, you did it again. We were able to see the launch in the GPS data, so we knew that a launch had occurred. We could independently verify that it happened.

But even better... Because of where the disturbance was located, we were able to observe that the location and strength of the disturbance were different than the two failed launches in the past. And that suggests that this launch had been more successful was the phrase I was using. And I got some for that, but you couldn't tell from the disturbance that it fully succeeded.

But you could tell that this time the second stage burned. And that was the thing they had a problem with in the past. And so, like, huge shout out to the Arms Control Wonk Slack community for, again, building a tool that allows us to make not only open source detections of space launches, but even to be able to characterize those launches a little bit.

So I think that's a huge thing. So I was pretty excited about that. And then you know a couple other neat things I don't know if you saw there's a video from an observatory in South Korea where you can see the separation of the first and second stages no I haven't seen that video I did see the ionosphere one and I actually had a question about it oh we can talk about that but go ahead we'll talk about that and then we'll talk about what they saw from the observatory because that's also pretty cool

Aaron 7:23

Yeah, so the question I had about that was that when that was shared in one of our little groups, your first reaction was, I think privately, and I think I can share this now, was that, ooh, that looks like it worked better than the last time. Like, what is it that you saw that made you think it worked better than the last time?

Because when I look at it, I still don't quite understand how to interpret it.

Jeffrey 7:42

Right, so... When you're looking at it online, there are these points. And these points are roughly arrayed in the shape of Japan, because what they are are Each point references a satellite ground station in Japan, and the location of them is why it's sort of shaped like Japan. But the map of Japan appears to move because what these points are is these are points in the ionosphere between one satellite and all the ground stations in Japan.

Aaron 8:16

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 8:18

And so as the satellite moves, the map of Japan moves. If the satellite were directly overhead Japan, then all the points would be over their real spots in Japan. So this is kind of like... And there are several GPS satellites at any one time that are within viewing range of Japan. And so that kind of gives you this mesh of dots in the ionosphere.

And the way the program is worked... Is designed is if, if there are substantial, any deviation from normal is color coded. And so yellow are the biggest deviation. So if you see a bunch of yellow dots, got it. That's a rocket engine burning through the atmosphere, creating an ionospheric disturbance. Got it. Now it's a little tricky because this is a simplified model and, It's just a little tricky, but the location of the yellow flashes, which is complicated because the location is a little bit of function of the model and a little bit of function of reality.

So you have to make sure that the location that you're looking at is a function of reality and not a function of your model, but still the location of the flash Was in a different spot, and it was sort of further down the trajectory. I see that now. No, that actually makes a lot of sense. That's a really cool model.

So we just sort of look at it, and really what you're doing is you're comparing it to the two previous launches. If I recall correctly, we didn't even, I think we didn't, See the first launch at all because the second stage didn't burn. And the second launch we did see, but maybe that was because they detonated it.

Right. And so we saw the disturbance from the detonation. And that was great because we could sort of be like, oh, well, there's kind of the detonation. But it was like not nearly as far along. So this really conveyed to us that the first stage burned all the way. And the second stage separated and at least started burning, which is the thing they didn't do in the first launch.

Aaron 10:32

Right. Which would suggest, as you said originally, this is more successful. I'm doing air quotes. People can't see that than the previous ones because of where the dots were going yellow.

Jeffrey 10:42

Yeah. Now, we have to be a little careful with this because... They did detonate. And this is the thing we saw in the observatory. They did detonate the first stage. You can see it in video from South Korea. Once the second stage separates and gets away, the North Koreans blow up the first stage. So the South Koreans will have a harder time recovering.

Aaron 11:05

I was about to say, isn't that because the last time it was embarrassing? I think it was the first time it was embarrassing that the South Koreans fished out the first stage. Yeah, I think the North Koreans just don't freaking like that.

Jeffrey 11:16

So I have, you know, there are some outstanding questions about what we're really seeing. Are we seeing the explosion? Are we seeing the engine burn? I mean, these are all new phenomenon to us that we're still working through. But, you know, to a first approximation... The disturbance we saw was further downrange, and that would suggest everything went better.

And indeed, then you end up with the satellite in orbit. And so I think the U.S. government is tracking it and has said there it is. And then there's a community of visual satellite observers who with their eyes are looking up and they can see that it's there. So like there is a satellite in orbit. Right. So I would say it worked.

Now, some of those same satellite observers, by the way, are looking for evidence of broadcasts from the satellite down to Earth.

Aaron 12:05

So that was the piece of evidence that so far has been left out. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The North Koreans, I think, have said that they have gotten basically images downloaded from the satellite, but they haven't shown them off yet. That's right. Well, they said they imaged...

Jeffrey 12:19

They said they imaged... Guam. Anderson and the port at Guam, right? So they imaged Guam. It's not clear that just because they imaged it, that data might still be sitting on the satellite. They may not have brought it down. And there's usually like a shakeout period, right? So they're going to experiment with the satellite just to make sure that it's working.

But yeah, they said they've imaged it. It's not clear to me, observers. I would have to go look at like who's looking for the transmissions and where they are and whether that would be something that, you know, would work. But like, I mean, this is kind of rinky dink at this point. They put the damn thing in orbit.

It probably works.

Aaron 13:02

Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I think they've cleared the hurdle that they've challenged so far, which is that they haven't been able to put something in orbit, right? And so that if there's some issues with some of the mechanical properties on the actual satellite or perhaps the data link between the satellite and the ground station, which I agree with you, I think it probably works.

It's iterative, right? I mean, there will be issues.

Jeffrey 13:28

Right, there will be issues. I mean, I just go look at planets database of satellite imagery and right. They look much better now than they used to, because you do it and you get better at it. So obviously there are going to be issues, but to a first approximation, I think when the North Koreans show us a picture of Guam, I, I'm not, I'll double check, of course, you know, cause that's what I do.

I look, you know, I look for lies, but I, I won't be shocked if it works. But,

Aaron 14:00

What's going to happen, though, is that it's not going to be as good as, say, some of the commercial imagery that you can already buy. Right. And so that's going to be, I think, some of the narrative that comes out of this, which is that it's more propaganda than not.

Jeffrey 14:16

It'll 100% be the case. And we should have a conversation. Now we've skipped over this issue of pictures.

Aaron 14:22

I want to talk about the pictures. Let's talk about the pictures. Because the pictures are wild. Then we'll come back to the Maxar stuff.

Jeffrey 14:28

I've got Kim Jong-sik and Jang Chang-ha in trainers. They basically took all the officials who are normally in their military uniforms and they dressed them up in these white tracksuits with white running shoes and white baseball caps and then put little colored vests on them. It's incredible.

Aaron 14:50

Do you think they did that so they looked like hippie peaceniks and scientists rather than the same guys who were launching their ICBMs?

Jeffrey 14:57

Yep. And they've renamed the NADA, which, you know, the National whatever it is, Aerospace Development Administration, which everybody was making fun of, to NADA, the National Aerospace Technology Administration. So it's no longer a joke. Although I think in the actual text, I think they've yet again – I think they had a different name for the space entity.

So – There's like a constant like rebranding thing that's going on, which I just find, I find really, really, really funny. No, it still says NADA, the State Administration of Aerospace Technology. But like, come on, it's the, you know, it's the same people.

Aaron 15:48

Kim Jong-Sik in Trainers is still Kim Jong-Sik, all right? So for the non-diehards, who is this guy? And why do you love him so much?

Jeffrey 15:58

Kim Jong-sik is, last I checked, although the North Koreans are sometimes a little cagey about people's actual titles, the vice department director for the munitions industry department on the Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee. That's a fancy way of saying that the party, because it's a one-party state, ain't no party like a workers' party party, the party has a department that's responsible for the munitions industry.

It has a director who has changed, it's changed persons a couple of times. But then they have a series of vice directors who are very powerful. And the vice director who is the person with the top day-to-day responsibility for the whole missile and space program is Kim Jong-Sik.

Aaron 16:44

And they got him in Trainers.

Jeffrey 16:47

I mean, it's freaking fantastic. He's getting a little, it's funny, as he gets old, he's putting on a little weight.

Aaron 16:53

Is he in the far left of the image?

Jeffrey 16:57

If you're looking at it, so he'd be on the right side.

Aaron 17:01

Let's see here. Because instinctively, when I look at these images, I look to see who else is eating as well as Kim Jong-un, and I know that he's important. You are 100% right. And he's on the far, if you're looking at it, he's on the left, but I guess he'd be on Kim Jong-un's right.

Jeffrey 17:19

Yeah, so there are the two people holding Kim Jong-un's arms who I haven't yet identified the two people holding his arms, but they seem to be the top technical people. Right. I mean, we've seen them before, but I don't have a name for them. The version I'm looking at is really blurry. Yes. And so I'm working from memory, but I think there are basically four people with no vests.

Aaron 17:46

Right.

Jeffrey 17:47

I mean, there are other people with no vests, but four in the center. Two holding Kim Jong-un's arms, who I think are technical personnel, although, again, I have to really look at it. And then there's what looks to me, although the picture's really blurry, that looks like Jung Chung-ha, who used to be the head of the Academy of Defense Science and is kind of one of the senior missile guys.

And portly. And the more portly guy is Kim Jong-sik.

Aaron 18:09

I see him.

Jeffrey 18:10

Who didn't used to be portly. I mean, this is, he's, it's funny. Like, you watch these people age in real time.

Aaron 18:17

And they get the larger allotment of food.

Jeffrey 18:20

Yeah. I mean, you know, I think we all, as we age, we all struggle with our weight. I don't want to take pot shot support.

Aaron 18:27

I am not pot shotting. I'm saying when I look at these images, and I'm not a DPRK expert, my eyes immediately go to the ones that are heavier because I assume that they're more important.

Jeffrey 18:37

Zhang Chang Ha is pretty thin, and I bet he gets all the food he wants. Fair.

Aaron 18:42

Fair enough. Maybe he has a fast metabolism or he's on their version of Weight Watchers. But I've derailed the conversation. Ozempic, baby. He's on Ozempic. He's on the North Korean version of Ozempic. Which is just called Ozempic and they, you know, smuggled it in. Smuggled in from South Korea. Yeah. I mean, the other thing about the pictures, I think, is that you pointed out to me is that he took some of it from the old but recently updated and modified satellite center.

Jeffrey 19:17

Yeah, so there are two stories. There's story one, they did a launch. And all those images show Kim Jong-un at the Sohae Satellite Launch Center on the country's west coast and east. You know, they show the preparations, they show the launch, they show Kim posing with people afterwards. Then the next day, he goes to Pyongyang. I assume it's the next day.

It could have been that evening, I guess. He and Kim Jong-sik go back to Pyongyang, and he goes to the General Satellite Control Center, which is the location in Pyongyang where they'll actually control the satellite itself. And he takes a look at the big board, and they've completely revamped the Satellite Control Center. I mean, I say completely revamped, The desks have changed.

It may be that there are new computers there. It's a little hard to tell in the quality of the image. But just visually, the indication is really different than when he visited, you know, like, I don't know, maybe it was two years ago. So that's kind of interesting, right? Because, again, that's evidence of this sort of constant investment and churn and change because they really care about this stuff.

Aaron 20:38

So we're talking about this off pod. It's just like they care about this for prestige. They care about it. There's absolutely a military value to this, right, in terms of being able to have independent imagery capability of, say, Guam. Yeah, I think so.

Jeffrey 20:56

Yeah, go ahead.

Aaron 20:56

Yeah, but as I was saying earlier before we came back to this image, it's just like those first images are not going to be markedly better, at least I don't think, than what you could buy commercially.

Jeffrey 21:06

No, we've already seen some of the imagery that they released from one of their earlier tests. The last time Kim was at the General Satellite Control Center, it was to get a briefing on one of the cameras that they put on a suborbital flight. Right.

Aaron 21:20

And that was the turn back and look, as we were talking about in our previous podcast. That's right.

Jeffrey 21:26

That's right, which you know, attitude control, it's also nice if you want to turn around and start dropping warheads places, but you know and that, that image was not amazing, but it goes, you know, I, I wrote a Twitter, X, whatever the, it's called now, thread about this where there is this Coping mechanism where South Korean officials are going to talk about how bad the imagery is.

And what they're going to do is use that to diminish the achievement, which, you know, fair enough. I don't think the North Korean images are going to be as good as the ones the South Koreans take and release. So, you know, I get it. But there's this idea that Low or moderate resolution imagery isn't useful. And while I think it should be open and available, and I think it should be distributed, like, we should also not pretend that it's not useful, because it's totally useful.

Aaron 22:32

I mean, it definitely has its uses, I think we should say, even if it has some limitations, particularly if they want to build independent targeting capabilities. Like, it seems pretty obvious what it's for. You know what I mean? It's to watch stuff in another Guam, in Japan.

Jeffrey 22:46

Yeah, I mean, the story I always tell is when the US government did the Landsat program, which we still have with us. The original position of the intelligence community was how dare NASA think about putting up a civilian imaging satellite, even at much, much lower resolution. And the pushback actually came from, I guess, was the I think it was USGS satellite.

Which was like, fine, then we'll do it ourselves. And then the intelligence community was like, actually, we would like our friends at NASA to be involved in this project so we can keep an eye on it. And when they put it up, Even at 60 meters resolution, which is not very high. Right. That's just really good for mapping.

You can see like farms and you can see like there's a city there, but you can't make out individual buildings. One of the first inquiries that they got was like the Chinese were like, we would like to buy all the satellite imagery of Asia, please. You know, so like. The intelligence community, I think, wasn't wrong in saying that even low resolution images would be useful.

They were just being parochial. Of course they would be useful for military and intelligence purposes, but they're also useful for a bunch of civilian purposes and it's good. It's good for our society that this level of transparency exists, even if there is some military value. And so I think the same is true of North Korea. Which is, yes, the quality of those images is going to be low.

And it's not the end of the world that they can do this. And they probably could have gotten similar quality images, you know, using front companies and whatever. But, like, it is useful for them to have their own capability to take pictures of whatever they like, even if those pictures are not as great as the ones that you're used to seeing.

Aaron 24:46

Yeah. And I do think that as they splashed us across the front page of their news papers, even if they're controlled and everybody in the country knows they're controlled, that there's some value there as well. You know, so it's not just on the targeting and military side.

Jeffrey 24:59

Yeah. And I mean, the pictures are going to get better.

Aaron 25:01

Yeah, that was my where I was going to lead the conversation is that this is the first go around here in 10 years.

Jeffrey 25:06

I think like, yeah, the other thing I put online is I put the first images that the Chinese took. You know, the first images the Chinese took were not great. You know, and they're beautiful, but they are like Landsat looking images, you know, and actually they did film and they did film recovery. But they weren't super high resolution and the Chinese have published them in books and you can look at those images and you can be like, well, I can't really see anything there, right?

Like I can see like mountains and cities, but I can't see individual roads or bridges and ships. And so like, what use are they?

Aaron 25:40

And the answer is like, you know, give it time. I do love any story about film recovery from satellites. That's one of my favorite subgenres of the Cold War that I don't think gets enough play. Maybe we should do a whole episode on that.

Jeffrey 25:55

We should totally do a whole episode on film recovery. Although I love that the US, we decided to do it the hard way by putting them over the ocean. The Chinese just, I think, brought them down on land. I don't know why we didn't do that. Can't do a parachute? OK.

Aaron 26:13

The Chinese also don't seem to care about debris falling onto parts of their country from rocket launches or space launches. That may well be the issue. My guess is there'd be liability issues. There'd be some 1-800. Were you dropped on by a filth canister? Call 1-800. Get yourself on a class action.

Jeffrey 26:29

Yeah, it's true. The Chinese also drop spent rocket stages in populated areas, lightly populated areas.

Aaron 26:36

I mean, statistically, it's very unlikely anyone would be killed. Just wait till they get that class action from the people of Xinjiang.

Jeffrey 26:44

I'm glad we... No, no. Well, they... I mean, actually, no, it tends to be in central China because they don't do a lot of westward launching. So, you know, it's like down in like Sichuan. I actually don't know where exactly the drop stages are. But yeah, in like southern and central China. But, you know, like.

Aaron 27:05

So hold on.

Jeffrey 27:06

I'm glad we live in a democratic society where environmentalists and NIMBYs can be like, I'm sorry, your national security doesn't mean that you get to drop a rocket stage on my town. It's good.

Aaron 27:20

So as we're recording here, in one of our chats, somebody posted a tweet from Thomas P. Tom Logan, another North Korean troublemaking missile launch, this time about three hours ago, SRBM into the Sea of Japan, now presumed by South Korea military as having failed. I mean... Do you want a live reaction test of Miss Logan the pod, or we'll skip this one?

Jeffrey 27:47

I mean, no, because one, we're not going to be able to see it in the ionospheric detection tool. And two, I got to go. What we'll have to do is we'll have to wait, see if we get a location. If they don't release pictures, geolocating that launch is going to be a pain in the ass. If it's big, you know, and they do it on concrete, it might leave a burn scar.

But if it's an SRBM and they did it out in a field, ugh, that's going to be a pain in the butt.

Aaron 28:23

Is there anything else we need to hit on the satellite before we wrap the show?

Jeffrey 28:29

No, I just think people need to keep a sense of perspective here. And that sense of perspective is, yes, these images are going to be useful for North Korea. No, that doesn't mean that we should overreact because it's not going to turn North Korea into a military powerhouse that can conquer South Korea. So calm down. And honestly, if we ever do get to a point where we are in the business of reducing tension with North Korea, Part of that is probably going to be not only allowing them, but like encouraging them to launch satellites instead of, you know, other kinds of things.

So Oh yeah. You know what? That is the one thing we have to talk about, Aaron. There are two other questions. One is everybody asks me is this really an ICBM in disguise? I mean, right.

Aaron 29:34

And the answer is no, because they have an undisguised ICBM. I was about to say, no, this is, yeah, this is no, it's not. I think we just answered that, it's not.

Jeffrey 29:45

Now, it appears to use the same RD-250 variant engines that the ICBM uses, because that's their awesome liquid propellant rocket engine. But no, when North Korea wants to test an ICBM, they just go ahead and test a freaking ICBM. Yes. I mean, they have additional data about the performance of their engines. So to the extent that technologies are shared between these systems, there's some data that crosses over.

But they don't need to pretend.

Aaron 30:17

Or at least they don't bother to pretend. I don't really have anything to add there. I think that's exactly right. It's two separate things. Okay.

Jeffrey 30:23

Second question I constantly get, and I didn't express this very well on Twitter, and my friend Marcus Schiller was like, wait, but no, you're wrong. And I actually agree with what Marcus is saying. The question is, Is this evidence of collaboration between North Korea and Russia since this summer?

Aaron 30:45

So that's where a lot of the media was going. And I meant to ask this, too, because people are saying it worked. That must be the Russian payback for all the stuff they're getting for the war in Ukraine.

Jeffrey 30:55

Yeah. So I think the answer is no.

Aaron 30:57

I also think the answer is no.

Jeffrey 31:00

However, Marcus pointed out, and I agree with Marcus, we do have lots of evidence of interaction between the North Koreans and other countries, right? So we have evidence of co-development of this particular rocket engine, which is in both the ICBM and the Space Launcher with Iran. Yep. And there's a fair amount of evidence that Chinese and Russian entities have been assisting the North Koreans, right?

Not, not necessarily doing it for them, but like you know, it's a source of ideas and components, and you know, whatever But I don't think that whatever has happened since this summer, it's probably too early for any assistance that would have come in to have made a meaningful difference in this. So I'm not in any way, shape, or form denying the role of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian entities in the co-development of this system.

But we also see the North Koreans are hacking the Russians. They're spying in Ukraine, like they're hoovering up as much information as they possibly can, and I think you just want to, without denying that there's some Russian technology ending up in these systems, and that these systems are really inspired by Russian designs much more than say Chinese ones, I, I think we need to sort of not imagine that this rocket somehow like Arrived in North Korea in the last six months, you know, since they cut this deal with the Russians, that's, it's just too soon for whatever Russian help is going to come I think to be, to have been integrated, although you know, maybe they got, maybe they did a Zoom call where they shared their data with some Russian scientists, and some Russian scientists were like, you know, turn the knob to the left, I don't know, that's possible, but it's normal for countries to launch, fail, launch, fail, launch, succeed, and there's nothing about the development cycle that strikes me as being

Completely agree.

Aaron 33:07

I think it's too early. And I also think it's part of that way people cope with it. It's the way you can minimize it is, oh, you know, they couldn't do this up until somebody gave them help. It's the way to sort of pat them on the head and put them in the corner.

Jeffrey 33:21

Well, and it also serves certain policy preferences, right? So one of my complaints about the Ted Postal piece on Russian aid to North Korea is he's been making the same argument for like 30 years, 30 years, 20 years, 25 years, something like that. And it exists solely because he wants to argue that North Korea will be able to defeat U.S. missile defenses because they're getting Russian help.

And so therefore, it serves his argument about the value of U.S. missile defenses, which I also think suck. So I, you know, like I'm I'm sympathetic to the policy process, but I just think that you you don't you don't. Put your thumb on your analysis about North Korea to get the policy outcome you want in the US.

I just, I think in this case, a lot of people, not Marcus, by the way, to be absolutely clear, I'm not talking about him, because I think he's a really great analyst. But I think a lot of people interpret whatever is happening in North Korea, you know, in terms of their policy preferences on other things.

Aaron 34:29

Completely agree. No.

Jeffrey 34:31

Which is not to say the Russians might not give them some cool shit soon.

Aaron 34:35

They may. I just don't think it's part of this system. Or they may. I mean, I think, you know, if they give us more images, maybe we'll change our minds. But, like, I don't think it's—I agree with you.

Jeffrey 34:46

I mean, the rocket doesn't look fundamentally different from the thing they were launching in the spring. And so if there are any changes, I'm guessing they're relatively minor.

Aaron 34:54

Yeah.

Jeffrey 34:56

Also, for the record, they said the second launch, they didn't mean to detonate it. It was the detonation system that went wrong. It wasn't a problem with the rocket, per se. It was a problem with this system. No one wants a detonation system like this except for the North Koreans who just don't want the freaking South Koreans to...

Aaron 35:19

To fish it out. Okay, now we've hit everything. Anything else we need to hit before we wrap up here? No, I think that's it.

Jeffrey 35:28

I think that's it. Maybe I should walk back the no one wants a detonation system like this. People do terminate launches, but this seems rather baroque. So I don't know. I don't have enough detail, I guess.

Aaron 35:40

No, I think you could say it's a little weird that they just don't want the South Koreans fishing out the first stage. I mean, they're clearly detonating things that would have just fallen in the water. Right.

Jeffrey 35:49

Because the South Koreans go and fish them out, and then they show them on TV, and they don't like that. I guess I'm just saying, I don't know how weird their range safety device is compared to ours.

Aaron 36:00

But behavior seems a little strange. It's a little strange. That's okay. All of their behavior is a little strange. We can say that. It's not not PC to say that on the Air Force Control Wong podcast. It's a strange... The acting of their leadership around this stuff is quirky. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I mean, once you get to know the patterns, quirks are valuable because then you have patterns and you can look for deviations.

That's right. Like Kim Jong-Sik said his name, wearing white pants and white trainers and no vest. He looks like a member of the village people from 1986. It's great.

Jeffrey 36:32

I just, I wonder, like, is he going to keep those? Are these going to end up in like, like, you know, like we all die. He's going to die one day if the regime survives. There's going to be like a whole like bio for him and there's going to be like they're going to like preserve his office because that's what they do with these guys.

And I'm just wondering is like the little outfit because they often put like the little outfits like on display. Are they going to have his like white sneakers and his white pants and his white shirt and his little baseball cap? On display, I don't know, I think, I mean, you can lobby for it, maybe they listen to this podcast, if you're listening to us, Kim Jong-un, you know, keep the white, keep the white outfit, you can use it, Miami Vice parties, don't, don't, no, don't wear it again, it's gonna get dirty, no, no, we wanted the bright, stark whiteness, like you know, you want to, this, this is like a wedding dress, you want to clean this stuff, put it in a box, and save it for, for posterity

Aaron 37:31

This is where we go off the rails. This is where I have to do the readout. You know where we have Miami Vice Parties in virtual is in the patreon.com slash ACW podcast Slack channel, which if you are a member, you get first crack at the ionospheric modeling tool, which I now understand, which means it's cooler than ever.

Patreon.com slash ACW podcast, $3 if you're a student, $5 if you're not. Join the, what was his name's tub? Sorry. Join the tubs and Crockett of the arms control community. And those are my junior fellows coming up the, coming up the stairs. And so it's time for us to end this show. So Jeffrey, thanks for for doing this on a holiday.

Jeffrey 38:14

I hope you dress them up like Kim Jong-Sik and Zhang Chang-Ha for the next Halloween.

Aaron 38:19

Tubs and Crockett. Okay. Whoa. Okay. Goodbye, everybody.