Shooting Down (Dumb Ideas About) North Korea’s ICBM

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

I think we should lock the KCNA and the Wall Street Journal opinion staff in like a little room and let them scream at each other until breakfast club style they start making out. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in the very sunny Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:35

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's L'Orphique Career Center for the Middle East, in a very foggy and not-so-cold today Washington, D.C.

Jeffrey 0:44

But you're back.

Aaron 0:45

I am back from the West Coast and I came back with a beard. I had to go fit in back in my old stomping grounds.

Jeffrey 0:51

Is it like a hipster lumberjack fisherman beard?

Aaron 0:59

No, I'm a little too – I'm not hairy enough for that and I'm not a hipster. I was around in San Francisco when these guys like first started showing up with their bikes and their PBR for two bucks on Wednesdays. Yeah. They've only since grown and metastasized since then.

Jeffrey 1:13

So as listeners can tell from your cheery bonhomie, it sounds like the family situation, which we're not really going into, but it sounds like things are squared away and you're back with us.

Aaron 1:25

Yeah, definitely back and things are headed in the right direction. So we're all good on that front.

Jeffrey 1:30

Well, things may be headed in the right direction with you, Aaron, but we gotta talk about North Korea. Of course. The possibility that North Korea would conduct an ICBM test. And the hairy-chested manly men who want to shoot it down.

Aaron 1:46

That seems to always be the policy solution for North Korea. Shoot it down or bomb it.

Jeffrey 1:51

Aaron, if we were only manly enough, this problem would disappear. We just...

Aaron 1:59

Got to be tough, Aaron. We got to get tough and we have to get the Chinese involved. Absolutely.

Jeffrey 2:05

If we get tough and we get the Chinese involved, maybe if we grow a big beard, what do you think? Think that'll do it? Maybe if Trump gets a big beard, maybe a lumberjack shirt.

Aaron 2:16

I think they'll respect us more than ever before if we just shoot it down.

Jeffrey 2:22

Okay, so listeners, obviously you detect the sarcasm. I am tired. Where do we begin? I guess we should begin with the New Year's Day speech. Did you read it?

Aaron 2:32

I saw the highlights, and I did read it. I love the way North Korean... I guess North Korean Korean is translated into English. It's almost like reading Iranian statements. It's just hilarious.

Jeffrey 2:44

Yeah, the translations are not good. This was very frustrating for me, because I think if people... Have an opinion about what Kim Jong-un said in his New Year's Day speech, and that opinion is based on basically any news reporting they read, it is totally wrong. so let me, let me spin out for you what I think happened, and you tell me if, if this comes as, as a surprise to you. Doubles as a knowledgeable observer but not full-time North Korea nut job. Yeah, me.

So it's New Year's, right? And Kim Jong-un's got to give a speech like that's that's the thing you do. And he spends the first part of the speech patting himself on the back. For all the good stuff that he says that they did under his watch. And one of those things he says they did is they completed the preparations for a flight test of North Korea's ICBM.

And that's it. It's a review. And by the way, we knew that. We reported that, I guess, back in April when the North Koreans did the static engine test.

Aaron 3:53

We talked about it on the podcast.

Jeffrey 3:55

Whole podcast, right? And so all he was doing is saying, hey, you remember back in April, right, with the engine and the flames at the place? That was awesome, right? And basically everyone said that was awesome. And then later on, like way later in the speech, he gave the standard North Korean talking points where he said that North Korea would continue to build up its forces as long as the United States was hostile toward North Korea.

Scott LaFoy 4:28

And.

Jeffrey 4:29

Reiterated their specific demand as long as the United States and South Korea conducted military exercises. And so it was the standard, if you keep doing exercises, we will keep testing nuclear weapons and keep testing missiles and keep doing things you don't like. But, you know, he left the door open, right? He didn't say that they were going to do all these bad things.

He made it contingent on stuff the US is going to do. Now, This is super frustrating for me.

Aaron 4:59

I don't know. Well, doesn't he always make this speech? The iteration thereof where if the United States continues to do this thing, he will bring fire down upon the – I mean it's usually a very pithy quote and a very pointed threat that comes out and at least reported in the English-speaking news.

Jeffrey 5:18

Right. Well, and that's – yes, this is exactly what he always says, although in this case they picked the more restrained language about bolstering their deterrent. So, yeah. I mean, what was so crazy about it to me – and I know this is like a tiny little – But it's interesting how the nuance gets destroyed when you play a game of telephone, right?

He started off by saying, we did all this stuff in 2016, a couple of nuclear tests, you know, got ready for the ICBMs, you know, we're moving along. And then later sort of makes this sort of claim of like, well, we're going to do these unspecified things if you don't stop your exercises, which basically leaves the door open a crack for diplomacy.

Now, you know, I... Are we going to stop our exercises? Probably not. Is this a good deal? It's probably not the greatest deal. Is he just, you know, making these things contingent so that there is some excuse when they do these things? Yeah, probably. But nonetheless. It starts with, like, if you don't cancel your exercises, I am going to do unspecified things.

And then people infer, which is not a terrible inference that, you know, one of the unspecified things is they could test the ICBM because he mentioned it earlier in the speech. And so, you know, it's like if you don't stop your exercises, Kim may do unspecified things and those unspecified things could include an ICBM. And then immediately it turns into...

Kim says they're going to test an ICBM. Right. And then it becomes, you know, Kim determined to test an ICBM. You know, Kim will absolutely test an ICBM. And it's like. Nah, you know, and so one of the weird things that we've been having is this discussion back and forth about how like what happens when they test an ICBM next month.

Right. But there's no evidence of that yet.

Aaron 7:03

Well, there's two things that this reminds me of. A, one of our previous pods about this very thing is I think you brought it up because you're the DPRK expert about how they're using more measured language because they're trying to portray themselves as a sensible nuclear power. Am I making that up in my sort of hazy memory because I've been off for a couple of weeks because of the family issue?

Jeffrey 7:22

I think I agreed vigorously with Andrea Berger when she made that point.

Aaron 7:26

Okay, okay. So I'm not making up another thing there. And two is, when did the president-elect come into all this? Because there was a tweet that came back out, one of the dangers, I think, of 21st century diplomacy over social media.

Jeffrey 7:40

Right. So, I mean, from my perspective, this is what's so frustrating. Basically, Kim gives this nothing burger of a New Year's speech. He tells us what we already knew, which is they did a static engine test of the ICBM engine last year and could test an ICBM at any time. Check. Right. Like we we even told Anna Fifield at The Washington Post that, you know, I mean, while everybody thought that the last the two failed tests out of Kusong were probably Musudans, you know, we said like, you know.

Don't discount the possibility that they might have been failed K-08 tests and whether or not they were, the important point is that can happen at any time. But there's no, like, sense that this is a pressing event that's going to happen. You know, it could happen any time in 2017. And, you know, frankly, if you read it really strictly, probably won't happen until we do a military exercise and they have a ready-made excuse.

But, you know, spray tan Caligula in the Twitter account – You know, he's kind of like, it's not going to happen. You know, like, oh, great. It's not going to happen. So suddenly his sort of unspecified threat to do unspecified things later in a date has been transmogrified into a threat to test an ICBM next week. And then we've got the president tweeting about it.

Aaron 8:58

They took high mother effing resolution pictures for the entire world and your team to see. Yeah. Really, I've been in a bunker for the past three weeks, and I came out of it and was preparing for this podcast, and I get your frustration. I don't understand where this all comes from, leading up to the spray tan man deciding to tweet about it, and then getting off on this hysteria off of a probably poorly translated document.

Jeffrey 9:40

Right. So, you know, one thing that happens, and I guess this is the part to represent or to introduce rather the Wall Street Journal, you know, the, you know, I keep calling them the Wall Street Journal opinion page J5, which no one gets. No one gets it.

Aaron 9:58

Told Scott about that joke and we sat there in silence. We had dead air.

Jeffrey 10:02

You know, and I occasionally people try to correct me. The joke is, you know, it's a joint staff element, right? And people are like, actually, it's the J3 that's responsible for operations.

Scott 10:13

You know, it's like, yeah, that was a joke, right? Like, it's...

Jeffrey 10:18

I thought it was more accessible. The point is the Wall Street Journal seems to think they have a military planning function. No comment.

Aaron 10:27

Right.

Scott 10:28

Yeah.

Jeffrey 10:28

So they're just like, oh, we'll shoot it down! Like, oh. Oh, okay. So... One thing that the wall street journal opinion piece made clear. And, and I've noticed this with a lot of reports is people are really confused. People keep thinking when, when Kim said, you know, we completed the preparations for an ICBM test. They keep thinking that he's talking about the space launch vehicle, which used to be called the Unha.

And that was called the Wong Myung song, the bright star. Which everybody in the US calls the Taepodong 2. But he's not talking about that. He's talking about the KNO8, the thing they rolled down the streets of Pyongyang twice, the thing that they posed Kim Jong-un in front of with the disco ball of death. You know, it's a road mobile ICBM that they have been screaming to high heaven that they're building and that they probably tested the engine for last spring.

And so, of course, they're ready to test that. That is not the space launcher. It is a different missile.

Aaron 11:36

Right. I mean, in fairness, we can't even pronounce the name. So how do you expect J-5 to get him?

Jeffrey 11:45

So, by the way, one thing I should say, we should put a little marker down. We see all kinds of evidence at SOHE, which is the Space Launch Center, that the North Koreans are going to do a space launch. And so when that happens, the fact that I have carefully explained that Kim Jong-un was talking about the KNO8 will be totally lost because people will say – This space launch, which we have seen coming since last fall, people will say that that's the ICBM he was referring to, even though it is not, because people cannot get their heads around the fact that there are more than one missile type in North Korea.

Do I sound frustrated?

Aaron 12:20

You do, and I was about to say, you're using the ubiquitous people. It's really a subset of the population who sort of advocate only one response rather than sort of any lucidity about the issue of what exactly is going on.

Jeffrey 12:33

Yes, you're right. You're right. This is the some people problem.

Aaron 12:36

This is the some people. Not all people. Yeah. Because we talk about it. I think our devoted fans, if you're on the Slack channel, know what we're talking about.

Jeffrey 12:44

Yeah, yeah. The Slack channel. Nobody's confused over there. Right. ... Yeah, so, you know, like, basically, there might be a space launch, and there might be an ICBM launch, but the ICBM launch is going to be off a mobile launcher, probably from a highway or an airport like Kusong. And that raises this series of conversations we've had where armchair missile defense experts keep talking about how we can and therefore should shoot the thing down.

Aaron 13:21

It's like hitting a bullet with a bullet, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey 13:24

Yeah, this is where Scott screams in pain. Bullet with a bullet.

Scott 13:28

I'm actually muted right now because of how angry I am getting.

Jeffrey 13:35

So we should talk about that. Although I do have to clarify, the Wall Street Journal has said we should shoot down the thing. And we'll talk about why that's not possible. People have said Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said we should shoot down the thing. But he did not say that. He said something else. And this is an important distinction upon which our entire discussion about whether we can shoot the thing down will turn.

He said two things.

Scott 14:02

The first thing he said is if the North Koreans fire an ICBM at the United States.

Jeffrey 14:07

Well, actually, he said if they fire missiles at the United States or our allies. So that would be an ICBM at the United States. It would be a shorter range missile at Japan. It would be a very short range missile. We have missile defenses and we could shoot it down. We can discuss whether the missile defenses are effective, but, you know, whatever.

That's what they're designed to do. And when he was asked about a flight test, right, which is where the North Koreans don't fire it at us because they're mad at us. So they fire it into the ocean to make sure it can work. Something I never thought I would have to distinguish. Again, don't have to do it for our friends on the Slack channel.

Then, you know, he said we should not shoot that down. But the Carter said we could shoot down the ICBM somehow again through this weird game of telephone turned into Carter said we will shoot down the ICBM. And so now he has, you know, come back to that and I think issued a second statement where he's made it yet even more clearer.

Scott 15:16

It's actually pretty funny because the statement the ICBM will be launched anytime and anywhere determined by the Supreme Headquarters of the DPRK, not said by Kim Jong-un, said by KCNA. We will shoot down the ICBM anywhere, not said by Ash Carter, said by the Wall Street Journal. I think we should just arm the two media companies and let them work out whatever beef they have with each other.

Aaron 15:39

At times like these, it's really comforting to know that our soon-to-be commander-in-chief is really up to date on his presidential daily briefings and is not getting his news from Twitter.

Jeffrey 15:49

Well, so that is what is so frustrating about it because on the one hand, I have to say – On New Year's Day, Kim did not say they were going to conduct an ICBM test. After the president-elect and Wall Street Journal started talking about shooting it down, then KCNA started talking about conducting an ICBM test, right? It becomes this action-reaction cycle of hostility.

Where they sort of say like, hey, we could conduct an ICBM test this year, but you need to drop your hostile policy, right? And then the Wall Street Journal is like, are you kidding? We are going to quadruple our hostile policy. And then KCNA is like, okay, well, then we're going to conduct an ICBM test. Maybe they did not plan, but after the past month of stupidity, I think we're a lot closer to it.

So yeah, I think we should lock the KCNA and the Wall Street Journal opinion staff in a little room. And let them scream at each other until breakfast club style they start making out.

Aaron 16:54

After dancing through the halls.

Scott 16:56

Yeah. There is literally a scene in Dr. Strangelove about an action-reaction scene caused by bad reporting. That was one of the underpinning jokes in Dr. Strangelove was it came from the New York Times.

Other voice 17:08

The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap. This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that. Our source was the New York Times. The failing New York Times?

Jeffrey 17:22

The failing – nobody reads it anymore. Sorry. Nobody reads it. I'm sorry. It's a terrible newspaper. It's all fake news. It's all fake news.

Aaron 17:31

Fake news. Okay. Back to the missile defense. Should we get down?

Jeffrey 17:35

So, I mean, just to disaggregate all this stuff, which is now so frustrating. I probably sounded like I was in a tunnel there because my head is literally in my hands. The North Koreans did not say they were going to test an ICBM at first. We in the West widely reported it as they were determined to test an ICBM.

We talked about shooting it down. And so we managed to elicit the statement from KCNA that says, yeah, sure, we'll test an ICBM when we feel like it. And so we have to disaggregate all these things. There may be a space launch. Which is something we expect to see based on changes we see at SOHE, not anything else, not statements the North Koreans have made, just the stuff we see.

Scott, I assume you're looking at the same stuff we are. If they do an ICBM test, it's a different missile, right? It's something called a KNO8. It is a road mobile missile. We can talk about what is under the hood. And if they test that, they will not Shouldn't say it's very unlikely they will test that from so, hey, right, they will probably test that from someplace else in the interior of the country. And, and, and, and again, they have not announced that they are going to do either thing. although we seem to be doing a really good job of goading them into it by threatening to shoot it down, which if they fire it in a test, we can't do.

Aaron 19:02

The Wall Street Journal, I think, just to pick up here, said the U.S. has ship-based missile defenses in the region.

Jeffrey 19:08

Yes.

Aaron 19:08

Dot, dot, dot.

Jeffrey 19:11

Which is a true statement.

Aaron 19:12

Yeah.

Jeffrey 19:12

But irrelevant to intercepting ICBMs.

Aaron 19:17

Which the K-108? Right.

Jeffrey 19:18

In addition to ship-based missile defenses in the Pacific, we have an excellent seafood restaurant here in Monterey. Also irrelevant to the task of shooting down an ICBM. Yeah.

Aaron 19:35

Yeah, well, that's coming back to the road mobile part. I think that's why you're going crazy, is why you can't mistake a space launch for a road mobile ICBM.

Jeffrey 19:48

Right. So, I mean, there's a... And I should say, one conversation we can have is, you know, if you... Every time they do a space launch, right, there's a discussion about blowing up the launcher on the pad because historically, you know, the North Koreans have to move the assembly building into place. They have to stack up the missile.

They have to fuel it. They have to retract the building, you know, and then they launch it. And so normally we get a little bit of lead time, although we get way less lead time now because the North Koreans have done a whole bunch of stuff at Sohae to mask those preparations. But, you know, SOHE is, if you speak Korean, you will be able to tell from its name.

It is on the coast. And so it is the kind of target that you could imagine striking with relatively little notice, right? Because you've got a large stationary liquid-fueled missile at a known site close to the coast. That's a big, fat target. And so I think in 2006, Bill Perry and Ash Carter talked about SOHE. Blowing up one of the Unha predecessors that was being launched from a site on the coast on the other side of the country.

You could do that. But the K-08 is road mobile. And so it's carried on a truck and that truck can drive around, right? And so unless you really know where all of the K-08s are in advance and you are able to track them out to their spot and you are able to respond really quickly... Which you could talk about maybe being able to do, but I think it would be a feat, and we can discuss that.

You wouldn't really have a shot at it on the ground, and so you're really talking about, they said, using these, they call them ship-based systems, to intercept it. But the problem is, the Aegis ships that we have deployed do not have an interceptor on them capable of intercepting an ICBM. We are developing... Such an interceptor it is not it's not deployed it has never been tested against a target and and and and so it it you know if you look at the pentagon's reports about the capability of various systems against various missiles of different types you know the listing for the ship based systems against an icbm is na and none right i'm staring at it right now straight red And, you know, there is this new interceptor, the SM2A, right?

Sorry, the SM3 Block 2A. Mm-hmm. And... When that missile is tested and deployed, it might have some capability to intercept a North Korean ICBM in the ascent phase, right? Which is just as it's entering mid-course. And some capability to intercept it in the descent phase, right? Which is just as it's leaving mid-course, right? But not really. Right.

And we can talk about the practicalities of that. But again, that's a that's a missile that, you know, like you'd have to like we'd have to have a test article laying around. And we'd have to have to have its first test against the target be a real life engagement scenario that I think would be almost impossible.

Aaron 23:12

You have to have a fairly good idea about where it was fired from inside the country and where it will land, especially if it's a splash down to the ocean, if it's a test. That's a big ocean.

Jeffrey 23:22

If you're going to try to hit it in the ascent phase, right, you've got to be downrange of it. And so since it's a ship, right, it's got to be downrange in the water. And so the National Academy has looked at this possibility. And, you know, they concluded that you couldn't do that if the North Koreans were launching against the East Coast, because it flies mostly over land.

And so there's no, you know, you'd basically have to park the ship in Russia, which is, you know, one, the Russians are not interested, but two, it's hard to park ships on land.

Aaron 23:53

Well, maybe we have a new president coming in.

Scott 23:56

We have Aegis ashore. I'm pretty sure we've parked ships on land in Romania right now.

Jeffrey 24:04

It is true that that site looks so much like a freaking ship. Oh, God, I love the Navy. Yes, but yeah, well, maybe maybe Pudi will let us put an Aegis ashore in Russia to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. We'll see. Now, they did say, you know, if the North Koreans were nice enough to fire it toward Hawaii.

You might be able to have a ship at sea that would have a shot at it. But this gets to the bigger question, which comes up on the other end when you're trying to intercept it in terminal. Why would the North Koreans accommodate us by telling us in advance where they were going to test fire it and then choosing a trajectory that maximized the very slim chances of us shooting it down?

Aaron 24:48

This goes to the perpetual problem in... Most these types of policy responses to North Korea, which ascribes to them no agency as if they're stupid. I mean, that's my biggest problem with all of this, is that you assume that they're dumb and backwards and that they don't know exactly what this is going on. Why would you spend all this time and money developing a real mobile ICBM if you didn't have to?

Jeffrey 25:13

Or, you know, say, oh, well, we were going to test it, but, you know, we're sporting fellows. And so just so you know, you should put your Aegis Interceptor 10,000 kilometers downrange at this point in the South Pacific so that you'll have a decent descent shot at it.

Aaron 25:29

Right, or we're going to launch it from this point near the coast inside of our own territory, not inland, because we want you to have a good shot at it, guys.

Jeffrey 25:36

Yeah, it's just absurd. I mean, you know, maybe they're really that stupid, but I just, you know, it seems to me, you know, what is the more likely scenario? You know, is that... You know, our hairy-chested friends, the Wall Street Journal opinion page, have decided that it sounds really tough to say we're going to shoot it down.

And so that's what they're going to propose. Because I noticed Charles Krauthammer picked up the same suggestion. And he sort of added parenthetically, that's of course if we can. But, you know, maybe not because Democrats have done everything they can to defund missile defenses. Right. Like, wow. So you haven't even bothered to check out like why the system would struggle.

But you are certain that if it does struggle, that it must be a Democrat's fault, even though, you know. For the record, it was the Democrats in Congress who pressed for more funding for SM3 and who pushed for Aegis Ashore and things like that. And it was the Obama administration that did Aegis Ashore. Contra the Bush administration, which supported a totally different architecture that's based in a fixed site in Alaska.

Aaron 26:46

Which causes its own sorts of problems, if you ask me. We can get into that side as well, and all sorts of ancillary problems associated with that interceptor.

Jeffrey 26:55

Why make it a partisan issue? Why make it a partisan issue? There are different architectures for different purposes. Thank you, Charles Crothammer, but no, that's not actually what happened. Are you still on mute, Scott?

Scott 27:15

I'm just so mad for so many reasons.

Jeffrey 27:19

Right. So, to close out that thought, you know, obviously, if you took all of our Aegis ships and arrayed them, you know, in a nice pattern, stretching from... The Sea of Japan slash East Sea. Please don't send me angry notes. Embassy of Korea.

Scott 27:40

Please don't stop listening, Korean listeners.

Jeffrey 27:43

10,000 kilometers downrange spreading out over the whole of the South Pacific. Yeah, you might get a shot at the thing. But it would be, I mean, well, we still don't, I'm guessing we don't have that many test articles, right? Because this is an interceptor. We have not tested. There might be a couple laying around somewhere. It, no, right? It's just so infeasible. and, and you know, even that assumes that they, that they do a test like that. I mean, they could also loft it. I mean, one of the questions I had when I, when we were looking at whether the launch out of Kusong, which you know is said to be a presumed Musudan, which I think I'm fine with, you know but, but.

You know, they have done all these lofted tests where they shoot the thing nearly straight up, and so it only goes a little bit downrange. You know, I have no idea how an Aegis system would do with a super lofted 10,000 kilometer range ICBM that only goes like 1,000 kilometers downrange and is like streaking into the sea of Japan slash EC at a nearly vertical angle.

But I just – I don't like my odds.

Aaron 28:56

Well, I think the odds is the important part here. I mean, just to pick up on that thread is – There's implicit into the argument made about shooting it down every single time is supreme confidence that you will hit it. And very little thought process into what happens if you don't hit it. I mean, Tomahawk hitting a space launcher on, you know, as it's being fueled is one thing.

Hitting something, moving it back into atmospheric reentry is another.

Jeffrey 29:26

Right. So, you know, and I think this ultimately we should talk about the system in Alaska. I mean, the reason that everybody says we could shoot it down and frankly, the Bush and Obama administration, I think, have both said following North Korean space launches, which went nowhere near the United States. Right. They go up. They go up and then the satellite goes into orbit.

They have given this kind of counterfactual – well, if it had been fired as anti-CBM against the United States, then the system in Alaska could have shot it down, right?

Aaron 30:01

It's policymaking in the third conditional, my favorite.

Jeffrey 30:04

Yeah, yeah. It's only three if it had been – yeah, right? Yeah. And you know, like that is what that system in Alaska is designed to do. Right. So I don't, it's not that I'm, I'm not totally dismissive of it. You know, it is literally designed and scaled to deal with a North Korean ICBM being fired at the, at the, at the, at the East coast.

But, you know, it does not have a great test record. And if you look at when, if you really pull apart, like, what does it mean that we could shoot it down, right? Like, what does could mean in this context? Sometimes they'll give you a number. They'll say, you know, oh, 90, 95%. And it's like, oh, okay.

Well, how is that? The answer is they're going to salvo fire five interceptors at every target. Right. And they have assumed, and I know why they did this, but I think this is a very poor assumption, that each interceptor has a 50-50 chance of hitting, which is kind of their way of saying, I don't know how reliable the system is.

And if you send five 50-50 chances up, then you're getting up into high confidence that one of them is going to hit. But that presumes that that 50-50 is like that all the failure modes are independent. Right. But if the reason you're not confident is that, you know, the subcontractor, you know, who makes, you know, a widget, you know, sucks, then then that widget, you know, is likely to it's not likely to be independent that it's going to break.

Right. Break it like all or most of them. So. I get why they say they have high confidence, and frankly, they probably shouldn't talk down the capabilities. So I kind of don't blame them for saying, like, oh, we could shoot it down. But we should not be fooled by that PR strategy, right? They have no idea whether they could shoot it down.

They just know they're going to throw everything they have at it. And then that raises the question, as you said, about where the missiles that don't hit, where they land.

Aaron 32:11

So this is one of the massive problems I have in my side of the non-pro geopolitical spectrum, which is in the Middle East and increasingly about Syria, which is everybody assumes it's a binary. Player X moves one position, therefore eliciting a response from player Y without forgetting that Z, all the entire alphabet is also involved. If North Korea is not going to give us any warning and is going to fire off a salvo of incoming ICBMs, And we have ground-based interceptors that are going to try and hit it in a salvo formation.

So four per one coming in. What happens if another potential adversary can't see looking into North Korea and just all of a sudden see streaking things coming from Alaska?

Jeffrey 32:57

Yeah, this is one of my favorite, like, Things where you know people get like all head spacey when they're thinking about missile defense you know and so it's like well there's a missile and the missile travels on this you know this trajectory and there's an intercept envelope and like everything is very mathy right and very abstract and sometimes you see this in missile defense charts where they have like a fake squiggly line for a country and a fake squiggly line for the u.s and they draw this trajectory but the earth is round right this is your argument about the b2 This thing called the North Pole, you know, and the Earth turns on an axis and the top of that axis, by convention, the top of that axis is the North Pole.

The north end of that axis is the North Pole. And the United States and Russia are basically wrapped around the North Pole with Canada in between. We're neighbors. We are neighbors, and a North Korean missile on its way to the United States will fly over Russia, and U.S. ground-based interceptors at the ground-based midcourse defense site in Alaska that are fired at that sucker will fly right into Russia, and they will light up the Russian early warning system.

Aaron 34:14

It's a lot more serious than prostitutes and the Ritz-Carlton men.

Jeffrey 34:17

Yeah, I mean, you know, you want to talk about something that will make you pee your bed. Right. Apropos of nothing.

Scott 34:25

So, you know, like.

Jeffrey 34:29

It is entirely possible for the North Koreans were to fire one missile and like I get, you know, if it's a nuclear missile, maybe you want to run this risk. Like if the North Koreans fire one missile that we can actually intercept from that system in Alaska. Right. So it's not being flown out to like Hawaii. It's it's being fired at at at D.C., We're going to salvo fire, and at best, one of those things is going to hit, right?

Because it hits, and then the target is disintegrated, and so the other ones will keep flying. So the four to five missiles, right? Four if we hit, five if we don't, will fly right into Russia. We can talk about the Russian early warning, but... You know, they missed, and at the time they had a bigger gap than they do now, but they missed, they have missed previous North Korean space launches.

And if they were to miss one of those, and just, you know, C-4 or 5 missiles streaking it from the United States, like we hope, they would go like, oh, you know what, that's probably a ground-based interceptor, and that's kind of crappy that they fired them at us, but you know. They're just going to like thud in Siberia.

But boy, that's a heck of a risk to take, right?

Aaron 35:43

It's a massive risk to take and then you have to factor in – we've talked about both these things on the pod, both the Russian early warning system. One of our very early pods, I was back in Geneva at that time and a more recent one about warning times. They have the same warning times that we do, if not less because of their lesser capabilities in early warning.

Jeffrey 36:05

They even have a football.

Aaron 36:06

They even have a football. And so compress warning times and introduce the humans into the loop. You have problems. It's not a binary. Nothing is a binary. Yeah.

Jeffrey 36:16

So, I mean, now, as Pavel Podvig has pointed out, they have a new radar, right, that does look that way now. And so there's a question of whether it would – I mean, it ought to be able to see a space launch, right? But, you know, like the upside is like, okay, they filled it in. It's a new radar.

But the downside is it's a new radar, right? Like, you know, it isn't, you know, and anytime you have something new in the real world, weird stuff happens. And so you could imagine an opposite situation where like having a radar is dangerous because if you have the radar and think you should see the launch and you still miss it because it's new or operator error, you know, it's down that day.

You might conclude that it really is an attack because there was no launch and you should have seen it if there was, even though you were wrong about that. There are all kinds of ways – Scott Sagan documents this really nicely in Limits of Safety – that when you have really complex systems, sometimes adding safeguards – Causes you to make mistakes when those safeguards fail because you think, well, this can't be a mistake because I had these nine safeguards, right?

And so instead of considering the possibility that your nine safeguards were poorly conceived in interacting with one another, and in fact, you know, like, they just didn't work, right? You actually end up with high confidence that an attack is underway when it's not.

Scott 37:41

And so I, you know, now this doesn't matter for shooting down a test because the North Koreans are not going to test

Jeffrey 37:47

An ICBM by being so nice that they fly it over the GBI system, but so mean that they are firing it at DC. But I just I feel like there are some technical and geographic facts there. Upon which this discussion is founded, that do not appear to be widely possessed by many of the participants.

Aaron 38:14

Oh yeah, but I mean, we could just bomb it and ask questions later. I mean, I think it'd get tough. Puff out our chest and they'll respect us more.

Jeffrey 38:21

Yeah, which then brings us back to the damn KCNA statement, right? Which is so like, they weren't talking about conducting an ICBM test on New Year's Day, but like, now they are. So congratulations, guy.

Aaron 38:39

Good job. Good job by you.

Jeffrey 38:43

Thanks for starting a nuclear war. We appreciate it. Well, you know what this is? This is a practical example of that aggravating question that I got in so much trouble for where people said, can the president-elect's Twitter account start a nuclear war? Right? And it's like, well... Kind of. Yeah. Like here's an example where you have an ambiguous statement that we could have ignored.

Right. And if and if it had been reported correctly, would have been ignored. But he doesn't get intelligence briefings or doesn't listen to them or he's not very careful or Mike Flynn is insane. But whatever the reason, the president gets the wrong message, maybe because he watches too much TV or president elect. And then he tweets out.

Right. Like assuming that a test has been announced, which it has not. He then tweets out a threat. And then his little minions who must defend everything he says and must show that they are tough. Then they write their little op-ed about how we're going to shoot it down. And then it feeds back into the system and you actually end up getting an ICBM test out of the deal.

And now you're halfway into your crisis. How many careless tweets do you need to add to this scenario before the Twitter war goes nuclear?

Aaron 39:58

That's a comforting thought.

Jeffrey 39:59

That's a depressing thought. I just think, you know, this whole thing is maybe poorly thought out.

Aaron 40:09

No, and I'm just begging that we stop infantilizing countries. I mean, just stop infantilizing these people. Five tests, you know, stated intentions of developing a road-mobilized CVM. Being pissed off that nobody takes you seriously. Taking high-resolution photos so that everybody can see that you're actually doing it. Posing in front of a mock-up of a warhead, of the disco ball of death, with the ICBM conveniently over your right shoulder if you're looking at it so everybody can see what your intentions are.

And then constantly infantilizing it.

Jeffrey 40:47

I mean, this is what I always come back to because, you know, I whatever I wrote a dissertation about China's nuclear policy. And so that makes me a permanent, annoying, permanently annoying person on this matter because it's all I want to talk about. But this is exactly what the Johnson administration did to China after it conducted a nuclear test in 1964.

We said, well, look, it was a nuclear test. But, you know, it's basically an experiment. And, you know, it will be years, many, many years before they are capable of shrinking that thing down and putting it on a missile and having confidence that that missile will work and that that bomb will survive the roughness of the journey and survive the heat of reentry to explode.

And so don't worry about it. And just show us what a great friend Idea that policy was right the chinese reorganized their test schedule changed the purpose of their fourth test which they did in 1966 right a mere two years and change after their first test and they put a live nuclear weapon on a df2 and they fired it across the country right and so it's like why are we daring the north koreans to do the same thing

Aaron 41:59

Because it makes us feel better rather than actually dealing with it from a policy perspective. Yeah, because I think we have no idea what to do.

Scott 42:06

Well, we do know what to do.

Aaron 42:07

We have no idea what to do. It's not politically expedient. You have to freeze the program. Yeah, we don't want to do it. Nobody wants to do it.

Jeffrey 42:12

You have to cut a deal. You have to cut a deal. Yeah, and the deal is not going to be as good as the one you could have gotten – 16 years ago. And so that will require admitting that all the hairy chested tough talk was counterproductive and that all the people of both parties who have been overseeing this issue have been talking us into a worse and worse strategic situation.

And I guess it's hard to get people to admit that.

Aaron 42:39

Well, our new president-elect, soon to be president, is the master of the art of the deal. So let's see if he can follow through.

Jeffrey 42:46

As he said, China can solve it with one phone call.

Aaron 42:49

That's right. They can. We'll see.

Jeffrey 42:52

Just wave the magic wand.

Aaron 42:55

Tweet about it. Oh, God. I'm pessimistic.

Jeffrey 43:02

Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, Aaron, thank you. For letting me vent. I like it. It was fun. And Scott, thank you for doing your, I presume, obscene venting with Mute on.

Scott 43:19

Yeah, but there is, like, good news that I think y'all are overlooking. Happy Juche 106, guys.

Jeffrey 43:25

Yeah, happy Juche 106 to you two. Peace and love. Scott, do you want to say anything about subscriber benefits? The Slack channel seems like it's hopping. Chris Camp was psyched.

Scott 43:39

Yeah, everyone is pretty cool on our Slack channel. We have a couple really, really active users who are really fun people. We have some nice discussions. And now that we're sort of in the new year, we're going to be posting a lot more neat supporting pictures and documents. We've been doing that, I guess, regularly with episodes. It's a lot of fun.

Lots of fun discussion. Very funny people. I enjoy hanging out on that Slack channel a lot.

Jeffrey 44:03

Yeah, and I got the gift that you and your wife sent me, which seems like it's the basis of a pretty awesome future subscriber benefit.

Scott 44:11

Yeah, a prototype subscriber benefit.

Jeffrey 44:14

Yeah. It's a... It is a... Framed list of equations I requested. Nuclear testing equations, so converting the magnitude of the body wave to the yield, the depth of burial equation, the cavity spacing equation, done in beautiful calligraphy by Mrs. Scott Lafoye. Oh, I want that.

Scott 44:38

It's pretty freaking cool. We're currently planning on having at a higher subscriber level. You, dear listener, will be mailed a framed, hand-done calligraphy. There is a word for that, like a piece of calligraph. You will get a calligraph. You know what the technical term for this is, Scott? I do not. It's a piece of frickin' art. You will get a piece of frickin' art that my wife will lovingly calligraph.

Man, this is not a good word set. Of basically weapon testing equations. We're going to work out... Og shoot down missile!

Jeffrey 45:16

Write pretty equation. Og shoot down missile.

Scott 45:20

Aug wife, right? Calligraphy. So yeah, it's, I think they're pretty neat. They're a nifty little reward. And we think some of the nerdier folk it is called Arms Control Wonk Podcast, so we presumably have some sort of audience for that, right? So those are current and future Patreon subscriber benefits. so if you love the show, consider supporting us..

Jeffrey 45:49

If you merely like the show, hey, at least think about leaving us a review on iTunes. I think it helps promote the show. And no matter what, thank you for listening.