Transcript
Transcribed automatically: it certainly contains errors. It’s pretty good, just not perfect. We provide it here because, for accessibility, it’s better than nothing.
Jeffrey Lewis
0:02
When a Soviet RT-2PM Topol and a Chinese Wanshan 51200 love each other very much. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
Scott LaFoy
0:31
And I am Scott LaFoy, satellite and on-the-ground imagery analyst with a particular focus on missiles, which makes today real exciting, Jeffrey. Happy Juche 106, Scott. Happy Juche 106. And how are we celebrating? With a party and a parade. Hey, there were balloons. Did you see the balloons? There were balloons. They were lovely. And floats with fake missiles and then floats with maybe real missiles.
Jeffrey
0:56
Hi, I think some of those were some real missiles.
Scott
0:59
Yeah, let's talk about both.
Jeffrey
1:02
Yeah, I thought we would go through the North Korean military parade that we saw on Friday night that CNS team OSINT live tweeted under the terrible tag JucheFest2017.
Scott
1:17
It started real funny, got real dark.
Jeffrey
1:20
Yeah. Well, it was an evening full of surprises. Yeah. So I thought we would walk through the parade and just kind of do a TikTok of the various stuff we saw with the proviso that we're still trying to figure out what the hell most of this crap is.
Scott
1:39
Yeah, in an average parade, they would show off maybe one new system and maybe a modified older system, and we would then spend the next three years talking about that small change. What they did to us was show us something like, what, five things we haven't seen before?
Jeffrey
1:56
I, yeah. Something like that? A lot. The way I look at it is, in the past, every parade, they would show us a new tree. And today they showed us the forest.
Scott
2:07
Yeah. When we get to the ICBM of Christmas future in the later, is going to be the real, like... That's where I'd stop knowing what to do with this.
Jeffrey
2:17
Which ICBM of Christmas future? Yeah, both of them. So I think the way we're going to do this is we found on YouTube a relatively decent resolution video of the parade. We'll post that link in the show notes, and we're going to talk to that video and let people know the timestamps so they know what missiles we're looking at.
We'll also put a version of this on the Slack channel in the event that Pyongyang 1992, the YouTube channel that we're using, should magically disappear.
Scott
2:51
Which has happened before.
Jeffrey
2:53
We're going to start when we get to the pointy bits, but I should say, Scott, did you notice prior to the parade, there were like little, it was really interesting. The North Koreans showed us some of the things that we were going to see, but carefully avoided showing us. Yeah.
Scott
3:11
They had the nastiest teases, where they would show a picture of the SLBM, and if you really paid attention, it had a little more than the SLBM right behind it. And it sort of led to trying to figure out what's going on, what are we going to see today. Right, yeah.
Jeffrey
3:26
So the first thing we saw in that tease, but then if you drop into the parade at 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 22 seconds, is we see six tracked vehicles... Painted in this kind of navy camouflage.
Scott
3:44
Very reminiscent of Chinese naval camouflage from its previous parades.
Jeffrey
3:49
Right? With four tubes on top. Yes. And so I think... I don't know what you think, Scott, but I think based on the structure of the tubes, which, you know, is not the missile inside. Right. It's just the tube. But the tubes to me look like the tubes that we saw on North Korean ships for the KH-35 cruise missile.
Scott
4:15
Yes, there was a bit of discussion as to what these tubes were, and they are very consistent with KH-35 or the North Korean KH-35 alike. The shape of their front lid being fairly flat, the shape of the back being sort of rounded, and then those structural hard points for transportation and stacking, which, for example, SAMs lack, generally.
Scott
4:40
And then also it looks, at least to me, it looks like it may not go all the way 90 degrees. Like it may not point up. This part's a little harder to tell. Well, yeah. Which would be consistent with KH-35 firing patterns, which do not fire vertically. Right. I don't remember what angle they fire at. They fire at an off angle, but not vertically.
Jeffrey
5:00
Yeah, I didn't measure it. I would say it's approximately 45 degrees. Okay.
Scott
5:04
Yeah, something in that range.
Jeffrey
5:07
Which is, it's funny because, so the KH-35 is a Russian cruise missile. And in June 2014, North Korea released a long video, which was basically, it was just a series of artillery firings. And it was just like an hour of artillery firings, including a sweaty all-female artillery unit sort of firing much to Kim Jong-un's delight. But at 49 minutes in, there was this very brief glimpse of a cruise missile launching.
And when we saw that... Actually, initially, I think it was reported in the South Korean press that it existed. And I was actually at Wilton Park. And I, while my conference was going on, had this video playing silently on my laptop of 49 minutes until I caught the very quick cruise missile launch. And so I was able to, for 38 North, freeze frame that.
And it turns out the missile is visually identical to the Russian Kh-35, which can be launched off ships, but also can be used off land-based launchers for coastal defense. And we had a series of stupid kerfuffles. I got into the dumbest argument with Chad O'Carroll, who I like. I don't know. Something about 2014 was stupid. We're good now.
I don't know what the hell my problem was. But the bottom line is the North Koreans have had this cruise missile for a couple of years. It was a really big deal when we saw it in 2014. This is the first time we've seen it on a ground-based launcher. Right. And that's it. I mean, we don't know that it's in there, but the tubes look like that.
You would expect to see a ground-launched variant. The thing is painted all navally. So, you know, it does seem like it's a Navy system. So my guess is that's what that is.
Scott
7:00
Yeah, and listeners should know my bias. I follow the Chinese military parades fairly closely, so I'm biased to comparing things to those parades, though I'm never implying that that's where the tech came from.
Jeffrey
7:14
Oh, that's a huge thing we have to say, because I always reach for the Chinese analogs to things, and that's an aesthetic statement, not a statement of provenance.
Scott
7:25
We'll be very specific if we ever think there's that relationship. But so this, to me, looks like they are trying to ape the DH-10, now DF-10, naval batteries and their navy camouflage. Although if I remember correctly, the DH-10 naval camouflages, they use digital camo, but they don't use the same advanced camouflage that the most recent parade had.
This is like two Chinese military parades back.
Jeffrey
7:50
It's sort of sad. In any other year, this would have been a really big deal, but this is like, I don't know, the fifth or sixth most interesting thing in this parade.
Scott
7:59
Yeah, well, the chassis is going to come back, maybe. The addition of multiple missile systems onto these tank chassis is going to be a theme throughout a lot of this and many future podcasts. It was a big day for Ho Cho Yong, but let's...
Jeffrey
8:17
Let's skip forward to 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 45 seconds.
Scott
8:21
Because that is when our submarine-launched ballistic missiles show up.
Scott
8:28
Or the PGS-1, if you're like me and get tired of the KN identifiers. But it's the submarine-launched ballistic missile.
Jeffrey
8:36
Right, we should say, I mean, we always have to remind listeners. The North Koreans name their own missiles, and this is the, I can't speak Korean, Pukguksong? Pukguksong. Which is Polaris?
Scott
8:49
Yeah, the North Star, the Pole Star. Polaris, the same thing we named our first SLBM. No points for creativity.
Jeffrey
8:56
And the United States has its own designation system using KN numbers, and so... Their PGS-1 is our KN-11.
Scott
9:06
But either way, it is a solid-fueled ballistic missile launched from a submarine.
Jeffrey
9:11
I was thinking this would be the big reveal. We'd seen it earlier in the year, but still, you know, this is like a new program.
Scott
9:19
Yeah, and they showed off, what is it, six of them? Right.
Jeffrey
9:22
Yeah, and I think the purpose of showing off was to convey that there are a lot of these things, that this is not a one-off program.
Scott
9:32
Yeah, and that's going to, again, be a theme for this entire podcast. And one of the main things one does when parading missiles is to show that you don't have a test article, you have a functional program. I think there was discussion on Twitter as to whether or not these were loaded with their solid motors, which hopefully... Yeah, well, this is my fault, but go ahead.
I just can't imagine they are, because you don't put explosives in them. Ideally, you care enough about safety that you don't put explosives in something you put next to a crowd, but hopefully you care about safety enough that you don't put explosives next to the supreme leader of your country.
Jeffrey
10:05
I am partly guilty for this because I was having a conversation with Anna Fifield and I'm quoted in the post accurately. I can't complain about how I'm quoted. You know, I was making the point that one of the things that's amazing about these missiles is they're very detailed. And we can see a lot of design details, particularly because with foreign reporters, we have high resolution photos and videos.
Jeffrey
10:26
And so the question is, couldn't they be fakes? And I very inelegantly tried to make the point that They were real airframes. And I think that came off as me saying that, you know, that that necessarily meant they were loaded with solid propellant, which, you know, I don't think there's a nuclear warhead inside. I think, you know, George Herbert said, you know, maybe you fill it with epoxy and use it as a training item, which I think is possible.
I think it's also possible that they're just empty airframes that they haven't cast the propellant in yet.
Scott
10:58
Right. There's a number of ways they could be paraded without being loaded with anything. They didn't write inert on the side, but it's a parade you don't want to take away from the majesty.
Jeffrey
11:07
Right. But the point I inelegantly tried to make is I think they're real airframes. Right. They're very detailed. They're so detailed that they don't strike me as being parade. Like I have seen training shapes that are way less detailed than this.
Scott
11:27
Right, and one of the criticisms in the 2012 military parade was that those KNO-8s had some inconsistencies among the missiles, and is at least, as far as I could tell so far, these seem to be uniform mock-ups with uniform hardware. Right. That could change since this is just Monday, but... Right.
Jeffrey
11:48
Yeah, oh, the big warning, right, is everything we're saying is these are our second impressions now. And I think with third and fourth impressions, things are going to get more interesting. But what I was trying to convey to Anna is these things are so detailed that they strike me as being, I mean, I think the way I said it is, to make a parade mock-up this detailed, it wouldn't cost more than actually just making another missile airframe, right?
And so, like, they're probably out of the regular production run. At least the ones that I've seen high resolution images of. I mean, they look really pretty realistic. But that does not mean that I think that there were nuclear warheads and solid fuel explosives. You know, everything we say is wrong. This is my endless lament. Because, you know, anytime you talk about training shapes, people are like, oh, they're fakes.
It's like, I didn't say that either.
Scott
12:38
They're not fakes. They're just not... An active missile. There are a couple grades between those things. I say yet.
Jeffrey
12:46
I am not convinced that those aren't real airframes.
Scott
12:48
We also should note that when we say a fake missile, we mean something that's not representative at all of a real article. That's right. If these were made out of cardboard or did not actually represent a missile that had a program behind it or had been launched... Yeah.
Jeffrey
13:05
That's a fake missile.
Scott
13:06
Yeah, we're going to see. There is... I think it's actually at the end, isn't it? I don't know. Oh, is it at the end? There is a KN-14 with a serial number and a weirdly realistic armature on the top. That is a... Float made out of, I don't know, float materials. We need to get an expert in float imagery.
That's fake because that is physically like it's chicken wire and paper mache as opposed to the same kind of materials being made from the airframe.
Jeffrey
13:35
So let's look at one hour, 32 minutes, and 44 seconds, because I think this is interesting.
Scott
13:41
This is when the parades kind of went off the rails for me.
Jeffrey
13:46
Yeah. It's either an extended range scud or a nodong. It's very hard to tell.
Scott
13:52
Right, and I haven't done the measurements on that because, frankly, I am busy with several other portions of this before I get to the measurements. The difference between it being a Hwasong-6 or an ER Scud or a Nodong are, at least to me, immaterial right now compared to the nose cone. And we should talk about that last.
Let's talk about the chassis first, I think.
Jeffrey
14:14
Right, so it's our second tracked vehicle.
Scott
14:17
Right, very similar in design.
Jeffrey
14:19
Very similar in design. I think this was a big night for the Kusong Tank Factory.
Scott
14:25
Which is where we think that Pukuk Song 2's canistered tracked tail was produced. Which is yet to come. Right? Yeah, that one's going to show up in force later.
Jeffrey
14:36
I am really amazed at the number of vehicles now that we see that are, or number of missiles we see being carried on tracked vehicles.
Scott
14:44
There were some that pulled off in certain formations. Yes.
Jeffrey
14:50
The reliability, not so high.
Scott
14:52
Yeah, but also that's something that reasonably could happen elsewhere, but definitely plays into our biases on North Korea not being able to operate heavy machinery for long. So I'm not sure if I'm ready to chalk that up to actual reliability versus, you know, Like, I think one of the armadas at the Russian Victory Day parade broke down or had some sort of reliability issue.
You know, the armada works.
Jeffrey
15:17
Yeah. So things we should say. North Korea traditionally has imported chassis for heavy vehicles that carry missiles because they have not been able to make those chassis themselves. So as they shift to indigenous launchers, it's not surprising that they're doing what the Soviets did initially, which is starting with tracked chassis, which I guess are easier to make.
Scott
15:42
Right. We think.
Scott
15:45
It's getting difficult to tell if it's, is this a matter of North Korean industrial capacity and sort of what their industry is better equipped to make, because those big tells are difficult. Big wheeled tells are complex machines, especially if they're meant to survive high heats and whatnot.
Jeffrey
16:02
And I have been really excited about this because this is one of the Kusong Tank Factory that made this is one of four or five. I don't know if people care about the or five, but there are a series of plants that when Kim Jong-un visits them, they are not identified. So this one was called a machine plant managed by Ho Chol Yong.
Jeffrey
16:26
And Kim Jong-un visited it, oh, I don't know, a couple of times between 2012 and 2016. And I was very proud of myself because I geolocated the thing, which, you know, is hard because they didn't give you any details about what it was or where it was located.
Jeffrey
16:43
But I was able to notice he made another visit on the same day. So I knew the approximate geographical location and then went through a whole bunch of satellite photographs to identify the likely location. And the problem is he's standing next to this really big building under construction, which, you know, again, is no good in Google Earth because you need a new photograph.
Jeffrey
17:12
And I actually was able to get a photograph from, I think, the very day of Kim Jong-un's visit. If it's not the very day, it's within a day or two. Oh, nice. Yeah. April 29th, 2016. And you could see the building was exactly in that state of construction. So yay planet. And so, you know, I was like, why is this thing such a big deal?
And then I, you know, you look at the high resolution images and it makes tank chassis. Yep. And I was like, who cares? Well, you know. Whoops. Now I know, right?
Scott
17:48
There may have been some long-term strategic planning in this.
Jeffrey
17:52
So I think this shift has been planned since those visits started in 2012.
Jeffrey
17:58
I mean, this really has gotten a lot of attention and it's a big deal for them. And honestly, you know, I think it's because they can't build them. But we can talk about we can talk about the the implications for maybe you should talk about the implications for mobility.
Scott
18:13
This is something we've been trying to focus on and weigh the options on. A tank chassis is really good for going over rough terrain. Tracked vehicles are better at lifting certain kinds of heavy loads over rough terrain and over unfinished roads, which North Korea has plenty of. Michael Elliman and Mark Fitzpatrick did an excellent article a while back noting the small, small percentage of finished and improved roads in North Korea made it very difficult to actually operate a wheeled tell responsibly.
You can still do it. And like, for example, Chinese DF-21s and whatnot that have wheeled tells are meant to be worked To some degree off improved roads. They do a lot of training exercises showing them moving off-road. So it's not a hard stop, but it does make certain things more difficult, especially if you are hot-firing missiles, if you're not firing out of canisters and you're just firing off the back of your vehicle.
But that's a digression. So having these tracked vehicles, you get access to more of North Korea's terrain for potential firing locations.
Jeffrey
19:23
Right. They don't have the same range.
Jeffrey
19:26
But they have a wider area they could conceivably be hidden in.
Scott
19:30
Exactly. So you open up sort of basing opportunities. But the drawback is, like you said, where a DF-21 has a relatively robust range, even though it's not the most gas efficient thing, a tank is incredibly fuel inefficient, especially North Korean, like these older Soviet tanks. These are huge fuel guzzlers. So they're going to be very much limited in where they can actually leave to for firing.
So it's a weird balance that we... I'm trying to do some mapping and modeling on it, but I'm not done yet. But it's a weird thing to try to figure out the balance between where they can base and where they can leave from a physical headquarters to go to.
Jeffrey
20:13
There was a report that the North Koreans were looking at rail mobility for some of their missiles. And I have to say, given that they seem to care about indigenous chassis production, and given that they appear to be struggling with wheeled vehicles, the enthusiasm for tracked vehicles seems to me to be a fair warning
Jeffrey
20:41
That they may also find heavy railroad cars to be an interesting solution. So I would not dismiss that possibility out of hand, although I don't know how they're going to drag a railroad car in the next parade. But as it turns out, the fact that this thing is rolling around on a tank, which, by the way, I think is ugly.
And I said that last time. And, you know, a Russian emailed me, sort of hurt, like, I don't know. I thought it had kind of a vintage Soviet look, which I realized for him was nostalgia and for me was ugly.
Scott
21:17
I think I got mail over Aaron calling it an ugly, ugly truck. People defending the fact that that was just what a tank is. Yep. And I enjoyed that as well.
Jeffrey
21:29
But that's not what's most interesting even about this object.
Scott
21:32
No, we're burying the lead a bit on this thing's re-entry vehicle, which has control surfaces on it, which is the implication being that it can terminally maneuver, which lines up with a North Korean news report released in March of this year, implying that they are working on an anti-ship ballistic missile.
Jeffrey
21:54
The Jong-An Nielbo, it's a South Korean media report.
Scott
21:57
Right, yeah, sorry, it was not North Korea that reported that.
Jeffrey
22:00
So I will tell you my big hypothesis.
Jeffrey
22:03
Hit me. All right. So you remember that there was a missile launched on, I think it was April 4th, out of Shinpo?
Scott
22:13
Oh, is this the spiral one? Because I think you're beating me to what I was going to talk about later.
Jeffrey
22:18
Uh-huh. So yes, I think this is an anti-ship ballistic missile.
Jeffrey
22:23
And I think this is what they launched out of Shinpo. Because when it launched out of Shinpo, people were like, oh, it must be a submarine-launched ballistic missile, because Shinpo is where they do the submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Jeffrey
22:33
And then later, Lucas Tomlinson at Fox, who I think is one of the best missile reporters out there, he got an official to say, no, no, no, it was just a Scud.
Scott
22:44
Right. Which is very weird.
Jeffrey
22:47
So my hypothesis was... It wasn't just a scud. It was this thing, which is a scud in an anti-ship ballistic missile role. And the reason that it tumbled, I think Lucas reported that it pinwheeled.
Jeffrey
23:05
And David Wright and I discussed this, and this is, I think, why I don't want to speak for David, but I also don't want to steal David's part of that conversation. Yeah. The shape of that nose cone changes the missile's aerodynamic properties a lot and might have been the reason it pinwheeled.
Jeffrey
23:26
And it would make perfect sense to launch an anti-ship ballistic missile out of Shinpo because that launch was perfectly timed for the start of U.S., ROK, Japan anti-submarine warfare exercises. And I think the North Koreans were saying, oh, you think you can come hunt our submarines? Well, we can shoot at you while you hunt them.
Scott
23:48
I'd even be curious if the pinwheeling scud was this ASBM, and I'm glad you brought it up because I was going to mention that later. We hadn't talked about that yet, but I think that and maybe something else we saw recently could be related to this. I would be curious if there was also a more practical end that they may have been looking at their remote sensing capabilities.
ASBMs need good long-range sensors to work. They need practical training to do the data fusion to get an ASBM to work. You can't just fire and hope if you don't know where the ships are.
Jeffrey
24:23
But you know what? There is a big naval base there. It's not just Shinpo, the shipyard. There's a naval base to the north where we've seen some of the submarine-launched ballistic missile tests operate out of.
Jeffrey
24:34
So there may be a link there in terms of the support infrastructure. The other thing I would say is, now remember they tested another missile out of Shinpo that also failed. And that has been reported as the KN-17.
Scott
24:51
I have missed that. What?
Jeffrey
24:54
Yes. So wait, 17, not 16. God, I know it's hard. North Korea's missing missiles. It's a, it's an endless thing I worry about. So you're not going to give a scud a new designation just because there's a different tell. It's this funny end. Funny long end. Scud or no dong. It's hard to know for exactly what it was.
And so I think the ASBM is the KN-17 and it's being launched out of Shinpo because obviously you can do it there because they have missile tests there. So they have in place the equipment for tracking. But I think also it sends a message because... The second test was timed for the Vinson, the carrier arriving. And the North Koreans even put out a statement to that effect.
And the North Koreans have put out propaganda in the past talking about putting a knife into the Vinson. So I, you know, it strikes me as it's a pretty nice North Korean story. Like we see this new missile, so it clearly must have a new designation. We have a new designation called a KN-17. It would explain all of Lucas Tomlinson's reporting without him having to be wrong, because he's not usually wrong, right?
So like, that's why they said it was a Scud. That's why they said it pinwheeled. Like, how can it be a Scud and a KN-17 at the same time? It's got this new nose cone and therefore gets a new designation and it's the ASBM. So to me, that all sort of fits together. Lucas said it and other people have the same story.
But this is a big reveal. I mean, I think the big takeaway is we saw a new missile, and it makes sense of something that had confused us. Like, why are Scuds pinwheeling? Scuds don't pinwheel. Like, their Scud launches work really well, and the answer is because they put this funny end on it and maybe made some other changes.
And so it's functionally a new missile with new aerodynamics, and they're just working it out.
Scott
26:43
Yep, and just to preempt or prevent any incoming emails, we do know that a failed missile can pinwheel. We know the Trident D5 has some very famous pictures of it pinwheeling, but that'd be very unusual for a Scud motor that they know how to operate.
Jeffrey
27:01
Well, and pinwheel may be not a term of art, right? I mean, how does this leak work? Well, there's some technical data and there are some engineers who make sense of it with some analysts. And then the analysts write it up and the analysts give it to a policymaker and the policymaker reads it and either does or does not understand it.
And then the policymaker decides that they're going to leak it to Lucas. Right. And then, you know, explains it to Lucas, either not understanding it or trying to make it easier. And then he has to, like, go and put it in language that your average television viewer is going to understand. And so, you know, it would not be surprising if somewhere in that process, I don't know where pinwheeled came in.
Maybe literally pinwheeled, but maybe that's a metaphorical description of a missile that got out of control.
Scott
27:46
Yeah, but it paints a pretty dramatic picture regardless. It's freaking awesome. So this is now what we call the ASBM. This, for me personally, the biggest thing in this parade, but jeez, do they physically get a lot bigger after this one. Oh, one last thing on the ASBMs. They have some very minor inconsistencies in their chassis. And so I am not sure what to do with this data yet, but there are very minor visual inconsistencies in some of their parts.
Jeffrey
28:24
Oh, very interesting.
Scott
28:25
It's not enough to say that they are fake missiles or whatnot, but it is enough to be... It was more than I noticed on anything else, but it's very small.
Jeffrey
28:36
One more thing, very aggravating, our first hint, the serial numbers. One way that we quickly identify nodongs and scuds is by the serial number. That's right. And this is the first time in which North Korea, instead of using nine-digit serial numbers, has switched to a new serial numbering system using eight-digit serial numbers. Thanks, guys. Fuck you, Kim Jong-un.
I have a whole new serial number system, so I can't be sure... What this thing is because they've renumbered. I think actually I understand why they renumbered, and it's kind of understandable that they did it, but it's still going to be aggravating. The serial numbers on the warhead of this probable ASBM match the serial number on the body.
Scott
29:25
That is correct, they do.
Jeffrey
29:27
So that may not always be true, but I think it is true here.
Scott
29:34
So, one hour, 34 minutes. We have... That is correct. These, as far as I could tell, at least an initial visual comparison, these are effectively the same as the one we've already seen and did a fairly lengthy podcast on.
Jeffrey
29:52
Again, the fact that the North Koreans debuted a solid-fueled missile on a tracked vehicle just a month or two ago... Any other year, this would have been the big takeaway from the parade.
Scott
30:06
Yeah, I'm getting DDoSed in real life here. I have been made... I'm desensitized to the BGS2 because I can look past it and I'm already worried.
Jeffrey
30:20
It's like, oh, yeah, that thing.
Scott
30:22
Yep. But those things. One important thing is that this settles a somewhat ongoing discussion about whether or not the PGS2 launcher was a test article meant for a one-off experiment. Oh, yeah. Was it just testing the canister? Or was it testing a new launch system? Like, system as in a whole launch system. Oh, my God. I just did a hand gesture into a microphone.
Yeah. That's okay.
Jeffrey
30:48
When you talk, Scott, I do hand gestures into my microphone all the time.
Scott
30:54
We should re-record this whole thing as a Mystery Science Theater 2000 type thing. So, yeah, this settles a bit of a discussion about whether or not this was a whole launch system that was meant to be operationally deployed eventually, or whether or not this was a test article meant for a one-off. And it's at a minimum a six-off.
Jeffrey
31:14
It's a thing. I mean, Ho Cho Yong... He had a good day.
Scott
31:18
He is making bank.
Jeffrey
31:20
Yeah. Okay. One hour, 35 minutes, six seconds. Musudans.
Scott
31:29
Yeah. They're in their... What was it? Was it Talimbar who noted that they're in their big scary paint jobs now? That was me! Oh, that was... No, data isn't real anymore. I'm so confused by all this.
Jeffrey
31:43
Yeah, I mean, so we've seen this launcher, we've seen this missile. Although, you know, I will note... The last time we saw a Musudan launch, it had the tire covers, and they're going to come down on the next parade item, but not on this one.
Jeffrey
32:00
I don't really know why they did that.
Scott
32:02
The thing I took away from that was that there are 12 of those.
Scott
32:07
There are 12 of these Musudan-style long ones.
Jeffrey
32:12
Oh, right, because these vehicles are probably imported from Belarus.
Scott
32:15
Yeah. So these kind of are almost the standard Musadons, as far as I can tell, they're the same length.
Jeffrey
32:24
Well, okay, so the scary black paint job, which we had seen before. Yep. Although I am curious about this. Like, we now have three North Korean paint jobs. We used to have white missiles with red accents for parades. Yep. And camouflaged missiles for killing imperialists.
Jeffrey
32:45
And now we have scary black missiles for I don't know why.
Scott
32:51
I think it's to match his tie and his button-down shirt.
Jeffrey
32:55
I mean, really, presumably there is some thought that goes into these paint choices.
Jeffrey
33:03
And I literally don't know what it is. It used to be very clear. Like, oh, this is painted pretty for a parade, and this is painted for use by the military. And now we have this third thing, which is like, We've seen this thing tested in this paint job, and so I wondered if it's an R&D paint job?
I don't know.
Scott
33:26
I almost wonder if it's a branding thing. The KNO8s, which not to spoil anything for everyone, they're coming back! The KNO8s have been kind of poked fun at a lot. And, I mean, I don't think that would be enough to, but, like, they came back and they're big and scary looking now. I wonder if this is just to give a fresh image of everything as not only kind of these new versions of missiles, but consistent with each other.
The Musadons and the K-08s are painted the same.
Scott
33:56
And I think, I'd be curious if that is...
Jeffrey
33:59
But not the Scuds, right? The Scuds are still camo.
Scott
34:03
Right, which does make it confusing. And I don't know, like, the Chinese change their paint job every parade, but the tells are the thing that are painted different because we don't really see any physical missile bodies during a Chinese parade except, you know, we see DF-5 airframes, but... I don't know.
Jeffrey
34:22
It's weird. And this was the second hint. It really upset me. It was clear when I saw these Musudans, because we'd seen Musudans before. This is not a new missile, and yet it has a new serial number style. So I'm going to have to relearn the whole thing.
Scott
34:40
And it does make some degree of sense, because the last time the Musudans were paraded, they weren't undergoing a rigorous testing regime, and now they are. And they're being, at least to some degree, retooled, because we've seen a bunch of new features on them. Like the grid fins.
Jeffrey
34:55
Yeah, like the grid fins. You have some nice close-ups of those grid fins.
Jeffrey
35:01
Ah, but I don't know what to make of it. All right, so that's relatively boring...
Scott
35:06
Yeah, it's the next one that really starts where it got. So the ASBM was the first, to me at least, the first big reveal. But the next one is the reveal that got weird. And so I'm at 1 hour, 36 minutes, and 17 seconds.
Jeffrey
35:21
Yeah, I titled this, Shit Got Weird. Shit Got Real Weird.
Scott
35:25
Yeah, I called it the K-08 Plus. Or Minus. Yeah, so it looks like a two-stage K-08, but extended. So it's like it ate its upper stage.
Scott
35:43
And then they put it on the Musudan armored, like, I don't know, the Musudan reinforced tell. ... Which I jokingly referred to as the Musudan-derived off-road armored bus, or for short, the MOAB.
Jeffrey
36:01
Oh, you hate me. You hate me. Why do people hate me? Yeah. Yeah, I can't deal.
Scott
36:09
This was an extended K-08, but without the small upper stage put onto a Musudan armored TEL, what we'd previously associated with the Musudan armored TEL.
Jeffrey
36:20
Right. Well, so... Let me say here, this is one of those areas where, I mean, I'm a little uncomfortable because I think you're right. Oh, by the way, so this is Roland with the panels covering the wheels.
Scott
36:35
Yes, that's what I mean by the Musudan armored tell. Sorry, I should be more specific about that. The weird, super heavy looking tell we saw during the only successful Musudan test we have photography from.
Jeffrey
36:46
Right, is this tell, not the one we saw with the Musudans.
Jeffrey
36:50
And I don't think I fully understand what the significance of that is, but... Yeah, so, okay, so the missile. I... Think it's the first two stages of a K08 or maybe a KN-14?
Scott
37:09
Right. Those are going to be really hard to actually tell the difference on. And this is like one of the downsides of it being Monday after trying to parse through all this data. We'll have a sequel episode.
Jeffrey
37:21
And we don't have the serial number to help us out.
Scott
37:24
Right, because they've changed all of that.
Jeffrey
37:26
So here are the things I think about this. One observation is that there was, a few months ago, prior to the launch of the solid-fueled Bukkuk Song 2, the KN-11 Ashore, a.k.a. The KN-15, Mm-hmm. The land-based solid fuel missile. There was a report that at the Chongjin Missile Factory near Pyongyang, there was sighted transporter erector launcher that had an unusual ICBM on it.
Jeffrey
37:58
That was less than 15 meters in length.
Jeffrey
38:01
I think that's this.
Scott
38:03
Which would be consistent with unusual ICBM. ICBM because it's a KN-14 or KNO8 configuration that didn't match a previously identified one, but was not the monster length one that we see with the KNO8.
Jeffrey
38:19
Right. So we had some previous reporting about what this thing might be, and I think that's a pretty good guess. Now, what I also... Think is interesting is, do you remember in October 2016, there were those two missile launches out of Kusong that failed and exploded?
Scott
38:39
Source of much, much discussion.
Jeffrey
38:41
We identified the locations based on the burn scars that we could see in the near-infrared imagery. At the time, the US government said they were presumed Musudans.
Jeffrey
38:53
And our hypothesis was the reason they said presumed Musudan is they didn't see the missile fly, so they didn't know what it was, but they must have seen the transporter erector launcher.
Jeffrey
39:06
So if they saw this transporter erector launcher with this missile and it blew up, they might have rolled in the announcement with presumed Musudan because it was on a Musudan launcher.
Scott
39:18
Which would be a pretty good description for the first time you see this missile. When it started rolling in the parade, I was like, what? Musudan modification is that? And then I saw it clicked with me.
Jeffrey
39:29
Well, and maybe they saw the tell, or the launcher, I try not to use the jargon, maybe they saw the launcher, but they didn't see it with the missile. You know, the missile came separately.
Scott
39:39
Or maybe there's some sort of relationship between these two programs that we haven't parsed out properly yet. Like, these are strange things.
Jeffrey
39:48
So we've got to model this thing, but I'm guessing it's pretty similar to the KNO8 in terms of its first two stages. I think that's a safe guess.
Scott
40:00
One hour, 37 minutes, and six seconds. They decide to play with my emotions again. I don't have a designation for this missile, because one does not exist, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey
40:13
Yeah, this is a thing. Yeah. Boy, yeah.
Scott
40:21
So, for listeners who don't follow, once again, Chinese missile systems, or for ones who do, this looks like someone hybridized a DF-31, a DF-21A, like that old DF-21 that was on a MEL or a non-integrated tail.
Jeffrey
40:39
The old school crappy Chinese... Technically, they're not transporter erector launchers, right?
Scott
40:44
They're MELs.
Scott
40:46
The mobile erector launcher.
Jeffrey
40:48
Because it's really just a trailer.
Scott
40:50
Yeah, the trailer is where the actual erector is on, not the cab.
Jeffrey
40:55
Cab is just a semi-truck that pulls the trailer with the giant missile in the canister.
Scott
41:00
Exactly. But then they also hybridized it with something Soviet, because that canister doesn't look Chinese. The canister looks Russian. Once again, not to say it is Russian, just in the sense that... North Korean design aesthetics. Very Russian. Very Russian, but generally looks like a DF-31. But the farther back you get, the more it looks like a DF-21A.
I know, it's really weird.
Jeffrey
41:24
And it's so big. Okay, so I have questions. Okay, yeah, the main takeaway is this thing is enormous. It is, we think, much too large for a KNO-8.
Jeffrey
41:36
Because one hypothesis might be they just stuck a can of weight in this thing.
Jeffrey
41:39
But it's really big.
Scott
41:41
Yeah. And it's a canister.
Jeffrey
41:43
And it's a canister.
Scott
41:44
The thing I didn't get a good shot of, and I am waiting for a good shot of, and listeners, if you have a good shot of it, please send it to armscontrolwonkpodcast at gmail.com. If you have a picture of its... Butt region.
Jeffrey
42:00
I got a picture of its butt. Oh, good.
Scott
42:03
Then I'm going to edit this part out. I'll edit this down, but leave part of it in for exciting live analysis. That is a cold launch missile. It does appear, at least upon initial view, to be a cold launch canister, not a hot launch canister, because it doesn't really have the many flame trenches that are typically attached to this sort of missile if it was carrying a liquid fuel system.
That's not a definitive thing, because once again, I am not 100% sure, and I could always be wrong because I'm not a rocket scientist, I am an imagery analyst, but based on comparisons of this particular missile butt with other missile butts, and George Herbert is pulling his hair out that I'm calling it this, because he has specifically told me the correct words for every part of this part of the missile.
Jeffrey
43:02
We love George.
Jeffrey
43:04
National treasure.
Scott
43:05
But to avoid getting into the specifics, this looks very similar to specifically Russian cold launch systems. It still may not be, but this is very similar to Russian cold launch systems because it specifically lacks the flame trenches, these small ramps that basically help move the flame away from the missile so it doesn't set itself on fire, which hot launch systems like Scuds always have.
And you'd need a fairly prominent one for a hot-launched ICBM. So I think this would be a hot-launched. If that's true, that would very severely reduce the chances that it'd be a KN-08 or KN-14.
Jeffrey
43:46
I mean, you can cold launch a liquid-fueled missile. But I will say we are focusing on this as a canister that has been developed for a future solid-fueled ICBM, which is probably aspirational and not sitting inside that canister.
Scott
44:03
That's at least my personal professional opinion on it, is that this is an aspirational or a notionalized version of a future system.
Jeffrey
44:12
And we note that the access ports into the canister are in a funny place.
Scott
44:16
Do you want to go into that?
Jeffrey
44:17
I would expect the access ports to be all the way, or at least one of them, all the way at the front. But if you have some other explanation, I would love to hear it in real time.
Scott
44:25
When you say access port, do you mean like for cabling and telemetry stuff?
Jeffrey
44:29
Yeah, that big giant box that we presume opens up to give you access to the missile inside the canister.
Scott
44:36
Yeah, I have a lot of trouble parsing exactly what's going on in a lot of this. I am a little suspicious that this system is a little closer to an actual fake system than the others, in the sense that I don't think the missile for this... Probably exists. I think it's definitely on paper and probably in some sort of design phase.
So I'd be curious if this is a prototype or just sort of a temporary Franken-truck put together to just show off what they're thinking about. But I'm not sure if this is actually representative of what will be an operational canister, which is why I refer to it, once again, as the Ghost of Christmas Future. Followed by, of course, the Ghost of Christmas Future's Ghost of Christmas Future.
Jeffrey
45:28
Well, and I noticed that the canister is physically different than the next canister. We'll see.
Scott
45:35
Yeah, it's... Maybe.
Jeffrey
45:37
I mean, it doesn't... It is. I don't know.
Scott
45:39
It is different, and that's, again, why I think the DF-31 comparison is interesting. The DF-31's canister is fairly different from the DF-20 one's for a variety of reasons. This, to me, looks almost like a... Because of some of the specific locations of the hard points, this reminds me of a submarine tube a lot.
Jeffrey
46:03
Oh, maybe. That's a really interesting thought.
Scott
46:05
Yeah, and so, like, this goes back to... So, my reference point, again, being primarily Chinese, is that these canisters sometimes share a design heritage with launch systems found in submarines. The DF-21's design heritage was the JL-1, and its canisters... Its early canisters, not its later canisters, showed some similarities with submarine tubes, and its very early canisters that have notional line diagrams produced by the CIA and declassified a couple years ago are submarine tubes, though it is unclear to what degree those were actually involved in operational launch processes on land.
Jeffrey
46:41
Well, I said it once. I'll say it again. The fact that the access boxes are in different places on the canisters strikes me as odd.
Scott
46:49
It's weird, but not something we totally know what to do with right now as a piece of data. No, me neither.
Jeffrey
46:55
All right. So we all think, though, I mean, just to close that out, right, that we are focused on that item as a possible indication of an aspiration for a future solid-fueled ICBM.
Scott
47:08
Right. And not just a transporter. It doesn't look like it. That's, I think, an important distinction I believe I saw come up occasionally on Twitter. It doesn't look like it's a transporter.
Jeffrey
47:17
It looks like it's a tell. We've got a decent shot of the back end.
Jeffrey
47:24
And we can see that it rotates up.
Scott
47:26
The system used for lifting the missile into firing position is slightly different than any others I am immediately familiar with. But, did you notice that it is built in a way that would allow it to relatively easily reload canisters? Yeah.
Jeffrey
47:46
No, I didn't.
Scott
47:47
Yeah, the canister. So if you look at the ring that the actuators and arms are on, the ring is actually only a solid ring on the bottom half. On the top, it's basically a claw. Oh, interesting. Which means that I think the canister may actually not start until you get to those trestles. The whole thing may not be the canister.
I'm not 100% on that. There's a lot of weird little things in this I'm still parsing out. Or it has a canister that rotates along its vertical axis, like we recently discovered the DF-21A does. So I don't know what to make of it.
Jeffrey
48:27
Yes, that's right. The canister rotates on its axis.
Scott
48:31
I think that's what it looks like, but I don't know that that's what it...
Jeffrey
48:34
I don't understand why they do that.
Scott
48:37
That's for a different podcast, because I have an idea on it, but I need to do a little more research.
Jeffrey
48:43
For listeners who are wondering what the hell we're talking about, once the canister erects and it's pointing up, it can spin like a sit-and-spin.
Scott
48:51
On the DF-21A, specifically. That should emphasize that we've seen those do that, and offhand, we have not seen any others do that.
Jeffrey
49:03
At 1 hour and 38 minutes, the piece de resistance.
Scott
49:06
What name do you want to pick for this one? Would you prefer Topol M or DF-41?
Jeffrey
49:11
Alex Kinnard, one of our students, one of my favorite students, tweeted out. He said, when a Soviet RT-2PM Topol and a Chinese Wanshan 51200 love each other very much...
Scott
49:27
They produced this horrific thing.
Jeffrey
49:31
For listeners, so the last missile was a vehicle we had seen before. So the two mobile ICBMs that North Korea has paraded... Were paraded on these trucks that the North Koreans imported from China, creating a tremendous controversy. They're giant, heavy-duty trucks. They have eight axles. The Chinese said the North Koreans just asked for them, you know, for forestry purposes.
Jeffrey
50:03
But obviously they showed up in parades carrying missiles, not logs. Right. And so we've seen the KN-08 and the KN-14 on this thing, and now it comes with a giant canister.
Scott
50:17
Specifically a Topol M-style canister.
Jeffrey
50:20
Yeah. That canister, well, you know, I mean, it looks like the other canisters they've built, but all the canisters they've built are... Soviet in their aesthetic.
Scott
50:30
Yes, that's the... Sorry, yeah, I need to back off of that statement. It's a Soviet aesthetic canister on an actual Chinese tell, as far as we can tell.
Jeffrey
50:40
And here, you know, the boxes to access it are at the front and the back of the canister, which makes some intuitive sense to me. But what is really remarkable to me is how large...
Jeffrey
50:56
That canister is.
Scott
50:58
So listeners familiar with the KNO8 may recall it has a fairly pointy reentry vehicle. The front end is pretty pointy. It extends over the cab, but it doesn't quite go past the cab. And as such, the front of the vehicle only has a teeny little dip in it. They've had to reconfigure the entire cab and cut a fairly large portion of it out to fit the canister in it.
They've removed the entire lift system that was used for the KNO-8. Basically, everything that was on top of this chassis in previous parades appears to be gone and replaced with a very large new missile.
Jeffrey
51:43
It really does not look like something I would want to drive around.
Scott
51:48
No. At a minimum, because you know you're just like the biggest counterforce target in the world at that moment.
Jeffrey
51:54
But, I mean, this thing is... It's ugly.
Scott
52:01
Yeah, it is... Nasty. It's a big, ugly missile system. It looks like the DF-41, and it looks like the Topal-M, and that is probably the design... That is probably the response they were looking to elicit from it.
Jeffrey
52:16
So, I have a hypothesis about this thing, too. Let's hear it. And I just want to know, we've had like four or five hypotheses, and so even if we're like 80% on these things, which would be pretty good, we're probably going to get one wrong.
Scott
52:27
I'd be really happy with 80%.
Jeffrey
52:28
Yeah, so it's, you know, fair warning, but... Do you remember this last static engine test the North Koreans did? Yes, I do. And they did it at Sohae. They did not say that it was a space launcher. It was big. Yes. And it wasn't the 80-ton booster, which they explicitly said was for space. Right. And the statement was coy.
It said, like, sort of, the world will soon learn the significance of this development.
Scott
52:59
Coy. The statement sounded like it came from Austin Powers. Right.
Jeffrey
53:03
Yeah, I know. I think that this thing may be linked to that. And again, that missile may not exist yet.
Scott
53:13
Right. I assume it would not.
Jeffrey
53:14
But this canister is so large that it's possible that it is designed for this larger ICBM, which maybe makes use of this engine.
Scott
53:27
So let's unpack that theory a little bit. That engine was a liquid propellant engine. Right.
Jeffrey
53:32
Right. And you... Oh, okay.
Scott
53:35
Yeah, so I... My, like, personal... If you want to niche my interests and specialties even more, I'm really specifically interested in missile canisters. I... This... Definitely is designed to look like a cold launch system. It definitely looks like it's meant to be.
Jeffrey
53:53
It's got a very solid back end.
Scott
53:55
Yes. It looks like the back end that we expect to see on the DF-41 that we do see on the back end of a Topol M, the mobile launcher for the Topol M. And I assume it is designed to look like that, but if it is representative of a future system, that would imply it is canister-launched, ejected into the air, and ignites mid-air.
I mean, we've got this weird mix of signals, because the practical signals we're getting is liquid propellant. That is what they're advertising, essentially, practically, in their tests. But they are showing us stuff associated with solid propellant missiles.
Jeffrey
54:34
Right. So I... Here is my... Here is where I'm pausing. Okay. I understand why you say what you say. Yes. I don't have any reason to doubt the wisdom. That's generous. Of what you're saying. You know, one of these is probably a solid-fueled missile launch system. One of these two things is probably meant to convey an interest in solid-fueled ICBMs.
I find it hard to believe that they're going to make two different solid-fueled ICBMs.
Scott
55:16
Oh, yeah. So I think that's one of the most important things to take away from this is I don't know that they're doing some sort of immense diversification like this. And I still personally believe as an analyst that a liquid propellant ICBM is what we will see first.
Jeffrey
55:29
So my reaction, I guess, is that it is possible that they are going to go down the crazy, crazy road of cold-launching liquid-fueled missiles.
Scott
55:44
I mean, you can do it. So I'm very unfamiliar with ejected liquid propellant systems. I know that's a thing. I'm very unfamiliar with those.
Jeffrey
55:54
It's crazy, but they do it. I mean, the Soviets do it.
Scott
55:57
Yeah. Oh, what am I talking about? The SS-18 does it.
Jeffrey
56:01
Yeah. Yeah. It is done. Now, is this a smart, sensible thing for them to do? No.
Scott
56:10
Pretty ambitious. I feel like the Russians get a pass for when they do this because they're really good at liquid propellant systems. They get the credit as being very good at producing engines and liquid propellant systems that are very robust and so good that they offset the value in fully going solid. Yeah. I'm with you. It's weird.
It's weird. Yeah, I don't know. So... Okay, so this is my tinfoil hat level analysis. So, user listeners, I am sorry. This is tinfoil hat. Don't write this or repeat this. I think the first ICBM TEL we see, the MEL, looks like it would make much more sense as a liquid propellant system than this one does. I think this one...
Is they're both obviously designed to look like that. I'd be curious if the Mel, they just swap out for a liquid and then leave it as a burner, like one-time use mobile trailer. I think that one would make more logical sense, though that certainly is not what guides missile design. It is about engineering and economics, not about imagery analyst logic.
What I would say is this.
Jeffrey
57:27
We have seen these two transporter erector launchers, or a transporter erector launcher and a mobile erector launcher, and we think they are aspirational.
Jeffrey
57:37
And so our task is, In this parade is to try to figure out what it is the North Koreans are trying to say to us and then ask whether that's reasonable in light of what they've been able to show to us. And I think we both walk away thinking that there are new ICBMs in development. Those ICBMs may include solid-fueled ICBMs.
And there's stuff about the launchers that we aren't quite persuaded by.
Scott
58:06
Right. And I think that's probably the base mark they were going for. Not to, you know, attribute intent to the North Koreans, but like... I think they basically were going for, here is your future in terms of deterrence and what sort of threat you'll be looking at. It may not look exactly like this when we're done, but this is, you know what these vehicles mean.
Jeffrey
58:28
And I think that's enough for analyzing this parade, right? Because as I think I said at the beginning, typically they show us trees. This time they showed us the forest, right? There is a metaphorical component to this, to understanding where this is heading. And, you know, I am fond of saying, if we do nothing... If we don't find some way to persuade them to slow down, this ends with a solid-fueled ICBM with a thermonuclear warhead on it.
And as I joked today on Twitter, President Chelsea Clinton saying it's totally unacceptable.
Scott
58:56
Man, I was sad with that statement for like 17 different reasons, and then you just had to end it with dynastic components, and you're killing me.
Jeffrey
59:04
Well, as I later said, that's fine because I'm sure that Senator George P. Bush criticized her for her feckless leadership in an interview with Alex Jones.
Scott
59:15
I'm done. I'm done. Bring on the ICPNs. Please fire them now! We're done here.
Jeffrey
59:25
Yeah, and I think if the meteor won't do it, you can still do it, Kim Jong-un.
Scott
59:31
We built our own meteors. We have the technology. I think you're right. They are saying, basically, this is what we're going to have. And I think the other aspirational thing is the ASBM, just to wrap it all back together, they shot off an anti-ship cruise missile and an anti-ship ballistic missile. What they are trying to tell us is that At the operational level, they're going to try to basically keep U.S. carrier groups of varying types out of the East Sea.
They are going to try and deter Washington with ICBMs. The only way they could have made this more of a forest view is if they also paraded every single Toshka and Hwasong-6 they had to just show that they really are running a complex deterrent concept.
Jeffrey
1:00:22
So, that happy note. Well, hell of a parade. Happy Juche 106, Scott.
Scott
1:00:26
Happy Juche 106. Now, do you think they can really one-up this for Juche 107?
Scott
1:00:36
I sincerely hope not.
Jeffrey
1:00:39
I think they're going to roll one of these things out into Kim Il-sung Square, erect it, and fire it. Oh, my God. Kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Don't get any ideas. Well, that was fun.
Scott
1:00:53
That was, and I think we should also point out that this was a long episode dedicated to very early professional opinions on what we think these systems were not only practically showing... But what we think they were trying to signal to us. So I think it's pretty reasonable to expect that, you know, maybe a week or two, maybe a month or two down the line, we may have either a follow-up episode to this, or more realistically, a very long series of follow-ups to this episode that are probably going to break down these systems, especially as they are almost undoubtedly tested repeatedly over the next five years.
Jeffrey
1:01:34
Yeah, we're going to find out just how wrong we were.
Jeffrey
1:01:37
Hey, Scott. Hey. Thanks for joining me.
Scott
1:01:41
And thanks for having me here. And thanks for Friday night Twitter parade watching. That was a lot of fun with everybody.
Jeffrey
1:01:50
The Slack channel went crazy.
Scott
1:01:52
Oh, my God. I got the automatic audit on just, like, message volume, and our message volume had increased, like, almost by an order of magnitude from usual. It was very busy, and we had a bunch of people organizing. Our user, Trey, was very good in organizing a bunch of pictures and videos, which is very nice and very helpful for me, frankly, as I checked in to be like, did anyone...
Did anyone just see that and be like, hey, I got screenshots? That was very helpful.
Jeffrey
1:02:23
If anybody wants to come play on the Slack channel, you can have access. For a mere $3 a month, go to our Patreon page and support our podcast so you can come play and we can keep making great episodes. And even if you don't feel like supporting us, at least consider leaving us a review on iTunes. It helps promote the podcast.
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