The Hwasong-12, finally

Scott LaFoy 0:02

Their contribution to One Belt, One Road is prompt delivery over long ranges.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:11

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament. 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 0:27

And I'm Scott LaFoy, an imagery analyst and master's candidate at the Georgetown University Center for Security Studies.

Jeffrey 0:34

F***ing North Korea.

Scott 0:38

Man, they told us weekly. They did, to their credit, give us warning. Maybe we should just build this into our Monday.

Jeffrey 0:47

Yeah, I just got asked a question, which I think sums up the conversation we're going to have today, which is somebody asked me, Can China control North Korea? And my response is, why don't you ask Xi Jinping, who just gave a speech about his pet project that he's dedicated his entire life to, how he feels about the controllability of the North Koreans.

Scott 1:13

Oh, yeah, man, they did this missile launch, like, what was it, four hours before his big One Belt, One Road speech? Yeah, his signature project.

Jeffrey 1:23

They might as well have painted a big middle finger on this one. That's pretty rude. I have this image of the North Koreans calling the Chinese up, and they're like, oh, we built a section of your Belt Road, and then the Chinese sort of look at a satellite image, and they're like, is that a pair of testicles in a penis?

It's like, yeah, yeah, that's your Belt Road.

Scott 1:45

Their contribution to One Belt, One Road is prompt delivery over long ranges.

Jeffrey 1:52

Yeah, so North Korea conducted a missile test, and boy, it's a doozy. I thought we would do a special pod just discussing what this missile is and what this missile means, because I don't think people are getting it. What do you think, Scott?

Scott 2:10

I think we're slowly building consensus on what it probably is. It's been like, what, two days so far, so it's still pretty early in the data. But we kind of knew this one was coming, we just didn't know exactly when.

Jeffrey 2:24

Right. So I think the introduction here, and there's a drill that we always go through, which is you start off and you get a report, usually out of South Korea via Yonhap, which is the Breitbart of South Korea. Yonhap. In the sense that it's semi-state media, not in the sense that it's hard, crazy, right. That's true. So you get a report out of South Korea that there's a missile launch.

They tell you the approximate location, which is Kusong. It's a very interesting location. And that the thing traveled 700 kilometers, which sounds like a scud at first, but Kusong is a weird place to test a scud. And I say from the get-go, we need a flight time and even better, an apogee. And boy, did we get both.

Scott 3:16

Oh, man. Yeah. So for listeners, you can't really tell exactly what missile was launched just by the range, especially since North Korea has been manipulating the angle at which they fire their missiles. The range has sort of just become one variable in assessing what the actual missile is, because they are basically lofting, which we've talked about a lot on the pod, shortening their range, but shooting it way up high.

Which is what they did, because the apogee was over 2,000 kilometers.

Jeffrey 3:47

2,111.5, according to the KCNA statement.

Scott 3:53

Yeah, that's enormous.

Jeffrey 3:55

Yeah, it's way up there.

Scott 3:56

Yeah, that's into, if it was orbiting, that's medium Earth orbit.

Jeffrey 4:02

If you're sitting on the ISS and you see it, you watch it go up above you and come back down. Very far. That is very high up. Well, so the way that I experienced it was, you know, the first thing we got was the Japanese government, the chief cabinet secretary said it was a 30 minute flight time, which was our first warning that this was a really high apogee.

And so David Wright did a calculation and he said, well, look, if it's 700 kilometers and a 30 minute flight time, then it's going to be a 2000 kilometer apogee. And if you straighten that out, David figured you get 4,500 kilometers of range, which is a serious missile, right? Because an ICBM is 5,500. So you're already way past the Musudan.

You're into the longest range thing that they've ever launched as a missile. And that's quite something. And that gets us thinking because we almost immediately conclude that this is not a Musudan, which everyone kept saying it was. Right. But it's that very strange thing we saw the North Koreans parade after the Musudan, which I started calling the K-N-O-8 mod odd.

Scott 5:09

I use the K-N-O-8 plus or minus. Right. That's what we talked about in the Juche Fest parade episode at the roughly 34-35 minute mark.

Jeffrey 5:19

And it came after the Musudan, so we knew it had a greater range than the Musudan because the North Koreans tend to parade missiles, yes, first by services, but then after they do the two naval missiles and they do all the rocket force missiles, they parade them in range. Right. So we figured that's what this thing was, and we said we had to wait for pictures.

And boy, did we get some pictures. Yeah, we got some nice ones on this one. I don't really think they want us to fail to understand what this missile is. They're really helping us out.

Scott 5:49

Oh, man, in the KCNA and Rodong Shimun articles, they not only do not want us to fail to understand this, they have a very particular idea of what they want us to understand it as. There's a lot of loaded language there, pretty clearly, to me at least, intentionally using.

Jeffrey 6:08

Yeah, well, so we can talk about the language they use that's loaded, because there are things I picked out. I wonder if they're the same things you picked out. What did you see first that really caught your eye?

Scott 6:17

Let me bring it up. Sorry. I did not have the Rodong Shimun in front of me, which I should have. You are a terrible member of the workers' party. You're not wearing your pin, are you, Scott? I wear my pin all the time. Where's your pin, Scott? It's over my... Oh, crap. What side does it go on?

Jeffrey 6:35

Oh, I'm in trouble. You are the worst. You hate Juche, Scott. I do have a Kim suit. I have a genuine, too.

Scott 6:44

Did you get married in it? No, I do not wear it in public. So the things that struck me the most, besides the way a little weird emphasis on how much hugging occurred at the event, was their specific emphasis on subsystems and the re-entry heat. Which were two things that, you know, we've talked about them on the pod before.

There's a lot of articles written about them. And maybe five years ago, sort of analysts and policy folks listed a couple things that the North Koreans... Didn't have that would prevent them from having a functional ICBM. And those were the proper guidance packages, the actual miniaturized warhead, and the reentry shield being a really big one. Because an ICBM, since it comes in way, way faster, it's going to need a really effective re-entry shield.

And so if you can't develop that, doesn't matter how long range your missile is going to be, it can't re-enter. It can't deliver a payload to a target. And they basically went through all of those things in this Rodong Shinmun release. And they've addressed some of them before and just said, yes, we've got them all, stop it.

Jeffrey 8:00

Right, and I think we've seen this in their propaganda, where they release not just images of the missile tests now, but they show us the engines when they get tested. A subject we will return to.

Scott 8:09

Engine tests, we've seen a reentry shield get burned up.

Jeffrey 8:13

And the reentry vehicle test, that's right.

Scott 8:14

Yep. And so the specific line that caught me was, it also verified the homing feature of the warhead under the worst reentry situation, an accurate performance of detonation system. Which just to me means like, okay, this thing comes in hot and it's fine. I'm not sure what to make of the homing feature. I don't know if they mean accuracy or maneuver.

I assume accuracy.

Jeffrey 8:38

Yeah, I do too. And I think the thing to say here is... Given that this reentered from an altitude of 2,000 kilometers... Jeez. ...it is going to achieve the same heat loads as an ICBM reentering. It won't be for as long. Right. But the idea, which I've always been critical of, that we can count on the North Koreans somehow to not figure out the reentry vehicle...

To me, I think that was not a good thing to be worried about, and the evidence now, I think, is overwhelmingly in support that North Korea will be like every other country. Every other country that's built an ICBM has figured out the reentry vehicle.

Scott 9:22

Yep.

Jeffrey 9:23

And so... The idea that the North Koreans somehow will be unique in this regard, that they will figure out the ICBM but not be able to figure out the reentry vehicle, strikes me as just way too optimistic. I mean, the accumulating evidence is that they know what a plausible reentry vehicle shape looks like. They've done the appropriate ground testing to have some idea that it will work.

And now they're testing at ranges that are getting very close to ICBM ranges, and those things are surviving. By the way, fun fact, I don't know if you knew this, I was digging around in some historical materials. When we talk about a reentry vehicle failing, you know, rather rarely it burns up. Mostly it just goes off target.

Scott 10:05

Really? I always assume it like compromised that like had like a one point compromise or something and just crumpled. I did.

Jeffrey 10:12

I did, too. But I found an old, old report on missile proliferation published by Stanford that I think Dick Garwin and maybe Sidrell were involved with. Oh, and, you know, they just sort of mentioned it in passing. And it's like now when we talk about reentry vehicles, you know. Not being able to successfully develop a reentry vehicle, what we mean is it'll tumble and go off course.

Scott 10:37

Right, which, once again, the homing feature of the Warhead under worst reentry situation. Right. Yeah, so they're at least trying to tell us that they have that. So you know what jumped out to me?

Jeffrey 10:51

What jumped out to you? Is it the Warhead? Yeah... The reference to the large-size heavy nuclear warhead.

Scott 11:03

Yeah, which kind of, to me, takes a creative way of addressing the they-can't-miniaturize problem.

Jeffrey 11:10

Oh, I think it's so much worse than that, Scott.

Scott 11:12

Oh, great. Let's take it down a couple pegs, then. Give me the bad note.

Jeffrey 11:18

Well, they've... They're already like, okay, so it is possible that they're saying, like, even if we had a big warhead, it would fit on this thing. But I don't think that's what they're saying at all.

Scott 11:34

Oh, no.

Jeffrey 11:36

Okay. I think they're giving us a little preview of what future nuclear tests are going to be.

Scott 11:44

Ah, so instead of being the, oh, we can build an inefficient thing and put it up, you think it's, nope, we have a honker now.

Jeffrey 11:50

Yeah, I think it's having developed a compact fission device for a missile when they test something much, much bigger in yield. I think we're probably likely the first thing we'll say is, like, let's say they test a thermonuclear weapon, right? The first thing we'll say is, well, you know, it's very hard to reduce the size of such a weapon to fit on a missile.

I think the North Koreans are putting a little marker down saying, not on this missile, it's not.

Scott 12:25

So we need to watch for the phrase large-size heavy nuclear weapon in the future.

Jeffrey 12:29

Oh, interesting. That's what I'm worried about, that this is a little preview of nuclear tests to come. I mean, they're not going to keep testing the same damn fission device over and over again.

Scott 12:39

Yeah, they presumably would advance.

Jeffrey 12:42

And it's not like... It's not like there's any secrets about thermonuclear weapons anymore, right? I mean, all the conceptual stuff is available. And so it's really just a question of whether they... And we know they have the materials. Yep. Oh, yeah. Yep. So, you know, why not? I mean, they're not that terrible at it. I mean, they may choose to, like, chill out, but... Yeah.

Scott 13:10

The science and engineering is not necessarily what's keeping them back, I think is what you're saying. Yeah.

Jeffrey 13:15

So those are the things that jumped out at me about the statement.

Scott 13:19

There was another little subtle thing that we were talking about a little, Josh Pollack and I were talking about a little online, and that's that they released very specific measurements for the range and distance. Like that 2,111.5 kilometer apogee comes from KCNA. That's who told us that. Yes. 787 kilometer range that was launched at, of course, like, they give a specific time.

I don't remember it. 458.

Jeffrey 13:51

Which is North Korean time, which is a half hour off of everybody else's time. Juche time.

Scott 14:00

But it's, to me, the combination of the discussion of subsystems and the very precise numbers, whether or not they're accurate, is meant to at least imply the idea that They have the ability to do precision measurements and that they aren't just spitballing it. They are doing a precise engineering test regime. And that's the vibe. To me, that's the vibe that this KCNA release is putting off.

And then people start hugging towards the end of it and it gets a little weird.

Jeffrey 14:36

I find those pictures interesting because to me they don't look staged, right? I mean, I think that that's sincere joy.

Scott 14:44

Oh, the hugging?

Jeffrey 14:45

Yeah.

Scott 14:46

I specifically mean in the article, it literally says Kim Jong-un hugged officials in the field of rocket research. Just a weird line.

Jeffrey 14:53

Well, you saw the guy giving him a piggyback ride.

Scott 14:56

Yeah, I still don't. That's crazy to me.

Jeffrey 14:57

Or no, he gave the guy a piggyback ride.

Scott 14:59

Yes. That's right. Strong back soldier.

Jeffrey 15:05

That's right. Kim Jong-un gave the guy a piggyback ride. So we should talk about the missile itself. Yes, please. The Hwasong-12. The Hwasong-12, which, you know, I saw a report calling it a KN-17. This cannot be the KN-17 that was fired out of Shinpo.

Scott 15:23

Yeah, so the sourcing on KN-17 was quote-unquote U.S. officials. It was not like a Paycom statement or a Stratcom statement. It was anonymous officials.

Jeffrey 15:36

Yeah, and I think that this is... Leaks are awesome. They help us do our job. We always have to remember that there's a game of telephone going on, because there's the analyst who's communicating things to the policymaker, and the policymaker may be communicating things to other policymakers, one of whom picks up a phone and tells a reporter.

And it's like, for that to get messed up, nobody has to be stupid or evil, it's just...

Scott 16:08

Yeah, it's four people involved in a conversation where two of them aren't specialists or know the jargon of the field or care about precision. It just happens.

Jeffrey 16:18

So I don't think it's the KN-17. I am definitely calling this the Hwasong-12.

Scott 16:24

Yeah, that is the North Korean name for it.

Jeffrey 16:28

So things that jump out at me, and boy, we're burying the lead because we're leaving the good one to the end.

Scott 16:32

Don't turn off the podcast, listeners.

Jeffrey 16:36

Just to get this out of the way, I think it's single stage.

Scott 16:38

I think so, too. The cable raceway is uninterrupted in a way that definitely implies single stage.

Jeffrey 16:44

And we looked at the versions of this missile we saw on the April 15 parade, and we could not see any break in the cable raceway.

Scott 16:56

Yeah, same thing.

Jeffrey 16:57

So those are high resolution images up close, a little bit obscured by the erector mechanism. But certainly a single stage missile, which is interesting because it may be involved in something later. But the thing that really jumped out at me because of the video they released, we got pictures of the back end of it.

Scott 17:20

Yeah, this is my minor obsession this week. It's going to be this thing's firing table is weird. All right, well... Or do you mean the back end of the missile with the skirt? Oh, you mean the engine.

Jeffrey 17:32

I want to talk about the engine, and then we can close with your obsession on the... Well, it's not a tell.

Scott 17:37

So tell me about the engine. I'm not as good at engines. Engines is something that I watch y'all talk about. Okay, so... Give me a rundown.

Jeffrey 17:45

So I am now... This is moderate to high confidence, because all the evidence is consistent with this, and I think this is now the best explanation. North Korea showed off a new engine in a ground test at Sohae in March.

Scott 18:07

Right.

Jeffrey 18:08

And the North Koreans made a very big deal about that engine because it wasn't a copy of anything so far as we could tell.

Scott 18:16

Right.

Jeffrey 18:17

Didn't look like any foreign missile that they had imported. And they were very straightforward that this was a missile they had developed themselves. And then they made this weird statement to the effect that the world would soon witness the significance of this engine.

Scott 18:39

Right.

Jeffrey 18:39

And they talked about how this engine represented, I think they called it like the March 18th revolution, which was to say a revolution in North Korea's engine development history.

Scott 18:51

Right.

Jeffrey 18:52

And then when we looked at the back end of this thing, it looks exactly like that engine.

Scott 18:57

Which specifically, do you want to run down that geometry of why that's noticeable?

Jeffrey 19:00

So it's a very large central exhaust from a combustion chamber. And four Vernier engines. So who was it on Twitter who said, look, Ma, no grid fins?

Scott 19:12

I don't know. I didn't see that. That's probably Marty. I think statistically that's going to be Marty.

Jeffrey 19:22

I'm sorry. I love Marty. He's fun. I love how much Marty queers our discourse. I love it. I love it. Like, he's just a one-man, just dedicated. Did you see the picture of Marty licking the bombs?

Scott 19:35

Yes, he does that a lot every time he gets the chair.

Jeffrey 19:38

I just... I just... You know, we've moved from Carol Cohn sort of quietly judging to Marty like just... Really, like, aggressively tweaking the boys' club. I just fucking love Marty. Look, Ma, no grid fins, so it's got the Vernier engines for steering, which is pretty fancy. Yep. So, you know, I mean, if you step back, I mean, this is a terrifying thought, because North Korea has developed its own indigenous engine, It's a very good engine.

It's a fairly sophisticated engine. It doesn't look like any of the engines we've seen in the past. And it performs far better than any North Korean engine we've ever seen. So, and it works, right? The rocket worked. Yeah. You know, fantasies about cyber hacking aside, I mean, that thing, that thing worked. So we're in a new era where the North Koreans know how to design their own rocket engines, and they work.

Scott 20:50

Yeah, and moving away from, like, hydrocarbon, like, scud engines, possibly.

Jeffrey 20:55

Yeah. So I think, you know, this test is a much bigger deal than people realize because... Because it really, I think, represents a turning point in their program. You know, in the past, they'd been reverse engineering things. They'd found other places. And so if you think about how we thought about an ICBM test, right, we kind of looked at like, well, what engines have they imported and copied?

And how could they cluster them or stick them together? And then there were conversations about how hard it would be to kludge together these existing systems and whether that was within or outside their capacity.

Scott 21:25

Yeah, that was the whole thing with the Unha, is it would kind of make a terrible ICBM because it takes so long. It'd be like the R-7 when the Soviets had the R-7 as an ICBM. It's so cumbersome and complicated, it doesn't work great for an ICBM.

Jeffrey 21:41

And now they're going to be moving into this phase where if they need to develop an ICBM engine, they're going to just design a new ICBM engine. We're not going to have that kind of warning.

Scott 21:53

They've built the industry and the personnel expertise that they should be able to do that now.

Jeffrey 21:59

The old way we used to do this, like, oh, well, they got... They had some Makayev designers show up. And what does Makayev design? And, oh, there are reports that they got an SS-N-6. Okay, well, how would I take an SS-N-6 engine and build an ICBM out of it? That whole way of thinking is now shit-canned. Yep.

Because if they want to build an ICBM engine, they're just going to build a bigger engine. And it's not necessarily going to look like anything. And because they're capable of building it themselves, it's not clearly going to, like, fail. So there's good news and bad news, I think, in this. Yeah. So I think the good news is we might not actually get that ICBM test this year.

Scott 22:39

Oh, really? Because you think they'll be focusing on this?

Jeffrey 22:42

Well, they may look at the KN-08 and the KN-14 and think, nah, not worth it.

Scott 22:47

Okay. Yeah.

Jeffrey 22:48

Right? Like, let's take this new engine that we've developed and work on that and make that bigger and use that as the route to the ICBM. Right? In the same way that I truly think that they looked at the Taepodong 1 and 2 and thought, yeah, great space launcher, not particularly interested in that as an ICBM. Let's try something else.

Scott 23:07

Right.

Jeffrey 23:08

Right. I think that they may well be looking at the K08 and the KN-14 right now and thinking, you know, we can do better than that. So good news, it may push the ICBM test off into the future. Bad news is it's much more likely to succeed when they do it, and it's much more likely to be an effective weapons system.

Scott 23:25

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 23:27

So that's all bad news.

Scott 23:28

Yeah, I was waiting for the good news in that.

Jeffrey 23:30

Well, the good news is it may push it off for a year or two.

Scott 23:33

Oh, okay, I see.

Jeffrey 23:34

Cheeto Jesus will take credit for.

Scott 23:35

Of course. Well, the other thing I found interesting was we talked a little bit about this thing's launch table, and I know we only got a couple more minutes, so we'll be super quick on this. It's got a weird launch table. It does not look like it rests flatly against the ground. So a launch table, when a Tel elevates its missile.

It comes with something called a launch table, which is sort of this block with ramps inside it to help divert the flame away from both the Tel, but from the missile, so that it doesn't kick so much stuff up that it destroys the missile while it's being launched. So basically, you know, they're a couple feet tall, and it's just meant to get the crap and fire away from the missile.

Those usually are either elevated slightly off the ground with a couple feet of clearance if it's a short-range system, or they rest on the ground if it's a long-range, larger liquid propellant system. This one appeared to require negative feet of clearance and seemed to rest on an additional hard point under it. Which Marcus Schiller brought up could just be a testing configuration, but if it is a more systemic necessity for launch, like the DF-3 had, the Chinese DF-3 and DF-4 had, which both of those require a separate firing table system.

Those missiles are brought to the position, erected by a transporter erector, a TE. They are then put onto a launch firing table, and then the TEs are moved away, which is what happened in this test. What appeared to be a variant of the Musudan-Tel, essentially backed up to a position, dumped the missile and the firing table onto an additional hardpoint, folded up, and then it was out of there.

It's not in any of the shots of the launches. This was a freestanding missile in the middle of a riverbed. And so, if that's the requirement, if that's how it fires operationally, and not just for a test, then that is going to severely limit their Firing positions to positions they build ahead of time.

Jeffrey 25:49

Right. So I'm curious about that because, well, let me ask you two questions and then we should probably wrap up. Is it that you, is it really, I mean, are you confident that we just can't see the tell?

Scott 26:06

Yeah. Okay. No, I'm fairly confident that the vehicle is not part of the launch process and that it is gone.

Jeffrey 26:16

And is that because of the video? I mean, I've been binging on so much stuff.

Scott 26:20

The video is what sold it for me. Okay. The KCNA imagery, more so than the Rodong imagery, is helpful for this. Okay. And then the higher-ish resolution shots from Yonhap that Yonhap was carrying make me pretty confident in it.

Jeffrey 26:36

And are we... I mean, given the funny armadillo-like configuration of this tell... Contra other I shouldn't call tell but you know of the rest of the vehicle are we how what's your confidence on the fact that this is an operational arrangement and not a test rig

Scott 26:58

I have no way to differentiate those, so I'm actually not sure.

Jeffrey 27:02

Yeah, me neither. I'm not beating you up.

Scott 27:04

If it's a test rig, they built six of them and paraded them.

Jeffrey 27:08

That's a good point.

Scott 27:09

If so, they have a testing brigade, which is also called a seed brigade. In two years, that's just called a brigade. One more thing.

Jeffrey 27:21

Yeah. Oh, no, Fisher, we'll see.

Scott 27:24

No, it's just, we'll see. It's a piece of data that's really weird. It's kind of like when we first saw the Pukuk Song 2 solid propellant, like, canister-tracked launcher. It's just so out there and different from other launchers we've seen that it's going to take a little bit of time for the data to totally settle on it, but it's weird, and at least my first reaction is this thing's not actually a TEL.

It's a transportable missile, not a mobile missile, and it'll take forever to get it loaded. Fun fact. Yeah.

Jeffrey 27:54

There were two missiles there. The serial number on the missile that launched is not the serial number on the warhead of the missile Kim Jong-un was looking at.

Scott 28:05

That's correct.

Jeffrey 28:06

And in all the parade articles, those numbers matched. Yep. Which means there were two missiles. I think in case one failed, they probably would have hauled out one and did it the next day.

Scott 28:16

Which, if you remember the successful Musudan test in last June, there was imagery of only one Musudan launching, but when they took the picture of the crew, there were two tells. So that would be consistent with at least how they've used similarly sized launch vehicles.

Jeffrey 28:40

Yeah, and I think if it had failed, then they would have tried again. But I don't know. I'm not particularly expecting a second test, although I guess it's probably worth noting that they could do that if they feel like, because they've got the missile out there.

Scott 28:51

Yeah.

Jeffrey 28:54

Other fun fact, Dave Schmerler and Joseph Dempsey had their usual death race to geolocate the launch. I saw. And I don't actually know who won, because I only know who DM'd me first. Ha ha ha! But man, those guys, this was a hard one.

Scott 29:13

Yeah, there was a third user, user Alden on Twitter. I don't like giving people's last names. It makes me feel uncomfortable. But he was off, right? No, I think he has it. Planet imagery supports him.

Jeffrey 29:26

Okay, well, the one that I got... The one I saw on Twitter was wrong. It was a couple kilometers off. Sorry, I don't mean to throw shade on this guy. Just a lot of people geolocating. Hard to keep it all straight.

Scott 29:38

It's hard to manage it all. We should talk off-pot about that when you have some time, because I think it's an interesting position. I think they may have fired it from a paved-over riverbed.

Jeffrey 29:46

Oh, that's odd.

Scott 29:49

So, great. Also, Chris on Slack, the final thing, Chris on Slack noted that there's a bunch of pictures of guys in Mott gear with tubes attached to it. They may be horizontally fueling this one. Which is weird if so, and I am really skeptical, but there are pictures of gentlemen in Mott gear with stuff that looks a little too thick for data and, you know, telemetry cable.

Jeffrey 30:15

That sounds, Scott, like the perfect pitch for people to support the pod for a mere three bucks a month and get access to the amazing Slack channel where all of these conversations are going down.

Scott 30:28

Come to Slack. It's awesome every time the North Koreans launch a missile. It's a friendly community of people trying to stalk down an entire national security apparatus.

Jeffrey 30:39

Well, I think that's not so bad as an emergency pod. I got to go off and teach about the Obama administration's decision to retire the nuclear tomahawk. Oh, great.

Scott 30:49

Oh, that's topical.

Jeffrey 30:51

Yeah. So, as always, thank you everyone for listening. Special thank you to those who support us through Patreon. And Scott, thank you for joining me.

Scott 31:01

Thank you, and special thanks to our Slack channel. They were real active yesterday and pretty good about collecting imagery and pointing stuff out. They're getting really good at that. So, y'all, thanks for listening.