The Cruise Missile Conundrum

Aaron Stein 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Arms Control Wonk podcast. My name is Aaron Stein. I'm a contributor to the Arms Control Wonk blog, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, and a PhD candidate at King's College.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:13

I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute, and a very delighted fan of the U.S. men's national soccer team.

Aaron 0:25

Yeah, we have to say that we tried to record this earlier, but global bandwidth issues appeared to have limited our Skype connection. I think everybody in Switzerland that was rooting for the U.S. was watching it on the Watch ESPN app. Including me.

Jeffrey 0:38

Well, you know, we're in a good mood, which is good. Maybe we'll end the third podcast in a row on a happy note.

Aaron 0:44

That's right. Let's see if we can do that. So I'm calling it the cruise missile conundrum. We're talking about your and some other people's discovery on a North Korea propaganda film of what looks like, if I'm remembering your column correctly, a KH-35 cruise missile, correct? Correct.

Jeffrey 1:00

Yeah, it's an anti-ship cruise missile that has a range of about, like, probably theirs is like 130 kilometers over the Russians. It's a Russian cruise missile, and that's got a longer range.

Aaron 1:13

Yeah, I mean, so essentially you had to sit through about 49 minutes of DPRK propaganda where lots of guns being fired.

Jeffrey 1:23

Yeah, I've obviously complained about it enough that you remember exactly how many minutes it is.

Aaron 1:27

I do. I reread your call. And sweaty women firing those guns, which I didn't see as I was watching it in fast forward.

Jeffrey 1:33

Yeah, I should probably put this in context. Yeah. The Chosun Ilbo, which is a South Korean newspaper, carried a report that there was some North Korean propaganda film that showed a Russian cruise missile in it. So I tracked down the original film, which is posted on YouTube, because that's, as our open source podcast suggested, that's where the North Koreans release their propaganda now.

Am watched 49 minutes of basically artillery firings dead and so the the there was an all female artillery unit that was huffing and puffing to get an artillery piece into position and kim jong-un was kind of squatting and staring at them it was really odd but yeah after 49 minutes of that There is something like a second and a half clip of a cruise missile launching, and when you freeze frame it, boy, it looks exactly like a KH-35, which was kind of a surprise because we knew the North Koreans were fussing around with new cruise missiles, but we expected that they would look Chinese or maybe Iranian, and it was kind of a surprise to see something more Russian.

Aaron 2:48

Yeah, no. One, it speaks to two issues that you were talking about. One, it's this now availability of, I guess you could say, easy access to propaganda-type films on YouTube that allow people like us to Keep closer tabs on what people like them, in this case the North Koreans, are doing. So it's sort of a plug for the open source work that we were talking about last time.

And the issue that I would say is growing in more prominence is this threat of cruise missile proliferation. So we focus a lot on ballistic missiles and WMD, rightfully so, but there's a whole subset of proliferation that's going on now that has to do with perhaps the less sexy of the missiles, which is cruise missiles. And I think it's a big deal going on, particularly with the anti-ship cruise missiles, and as Dennis Gormley likes to point out, the ability of new cruise missile-using states to turn those into land-attack cruise missiles.

With some effort, I would say, but certainly not out of the realm of possibility.

Jeffrey 3:49

Well, yeah, I want to talk about cruise missile proliferation and give our buddy, he's certainly my buddy, Dennis, some big props. But before we do that, I should say, one of the really important things about this analysis is I was not the only person who did it. Simultaneously, about three other people did it, including Kyle Mizukami, a guy named Andrew Haggard, Some now I'm forgetting. Whenever I make a list, I forget people, but there was a series of folks who were able to independently all find this movie, find that clip and make the same same assessment. So it was.

It was pretty cool. Although I have to say one colleague sort of was like, well, how do you know it's not stock footage? Which I suppose at some level is true, but... It wasn't actually all that helpful since other colleagues had been going through all of the stock footage. We were a little cranky about that. Yeah, sure, say it's stock footage, but give us a hand.

Go through the stock footage, right?

Aaron 5:02

You wrote a follow-up. We're talking about your two pieces on 38 North here. What I found really interesting was the second piece that you wrote in follow-up to it. And if I had to give you some criticism, I really wish you would have included both in the original piece because the second one where you added to it the position of the stuff I thought was fascinating.

And I'm happy that he challenged you a little bit because I got to learn a lot more about the way in which you went about doing the open source. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Jeffrey 5:33

Well, I do, and there were two pieces to it. Part of it is I left some of the stuff out because... I didn't want it to be really, really boring and dry. But some of the stuff I only found after. I mean, I knew I knew that there were all of these rumors of cruise missiles, and I'd been following them.

But these guys at something called the Oryx blog had this really amazing catch where they noticed in an earlier propaganda film, Kim Jong-un walks in front of a rack on a ship. And to me, it just looked like a rack, but they ID'd it as a cruise missile rack, and they were right. And what was really crazy is it's, I wouldn't say identical, but a nearly identical match.

To a cruise missile rack carrying the same kind of canister that has a KH-35 in it in Burma. And so... You're right. As a course of being criticized a little bit and then spending a little bit more time on it, I did come across this great observation that sort of supports the view that the North Koreans might be manufacturing these things themselves, that it might not just be a Russian sale, that they might have started exporting them to countries like Burma.

Although that's a very big claim to hang on a pair of grainy pictures.

Aaron 7:00

But it's intriguing, right? Yeah. Somehow all of the open source analysis you do leads back to Burma. Yeah, I can't escape it.

Jeffrey 7:08

This one I was totally trying to stay away from Burma, but I got dragged back.

Aaron 7:13

We can talk about Dennis. Yeah, let's talk about Dennis. I think he's... Plug, when I was at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies doing my master's, he taught the course on missiles and missile defense, and we managed to stay in touch all these years, and So he's nice enough to send me his books along. And I think his first book, Missile Contagion, for me, was a fantastic, I mean, I think it's the best work on the, I guess, the dangers of cruise missile proliferation and the salience with which emerging states in East Asia or in the Middle East are turning to cruise missiles as sort of You want to use that, call them like a poor man's air force.

You know what I mean? They, they're useful tools to combat growing us like missile defense capabilities, as well as you know, a useful alternative to larger ballistic missiles.

Jeffrey 8:10

Yeah. Well, I, and I should say, you know, Dennis is part of one of my favorite memories, which is we were coming back from a conference in the Italian Alps and we had loaded ourselves up with wine and You know, sausages and cheeses from a little Italian deli. And we did nothing but, you know, ride this train all the way to Milan drinking and eating Italian cold cuts and talking about cruise missiles.

So that was pretty fun. Yeah, it was, it was, it's a great memory. But what I took away from the book, which I really liked was that, Cruise missiles are as old as ballistic missiles. In fact, you've got the V-1 and the V-2 in World War II. The V-1 is the cruise missile. It's the V-2 that's the ballistic missile.

But for some reason, we've always been expecting an era of cruise missile proliferation, but it hasn't happened yet. And Dennis I think did a really great job of explaining why it hadn't happened yet but why it was going to happen sooner or later and I have to say the older that book gets the smarter Dennis looks

Aaron 9:20

Right. I mean, I think his big argument is that during the Cold War, basically, the guidance technology needed in the engine technology remained basically under the purview of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, particularly, if I'm remembering correctly, because they used terrain matching software. And in order to get that terrain, you had to have highly detailed satellite photos, which only a few countries have.

But now, with the proliferation of GPS and the ready access of systems like that, as well as... I guess you could say like the proliferation, if that's the right word, of turbofan, turbojet or turbofan. I always get them confused.

Jeffrey 9:56

Well, I think you can use both, and I actually bothered once to figure it out. I should know this as an arms control wonk, but not when you put me on the spot.

Aaron 10:05

Fair enough. So I'm forgetting it too. We can get connected in the comments. So the proliferation of engine technology, which allows for emerging states – To basically be able to put it together with difficulty, which he points out, and which is one of the reasons I really enjoy his book, is because he points out how states, you know, it's the tacit versus passive knowledge debate, and how states, just because they conceptually know how to put it together, don't always succeed at it, which I think is coming back to the North Korean thing, could be something that we should pay a lot more attention to.

Maybe they've crossed that threshold already.

Jeffrey 10:43

Yeah, so, I mean, the conversation he has about tacit knowledge, I think, is pretty useful. And it's the notion that there is the technology which is spreading, but the thing that causes it to spread a little bit more slowly than one would expect is it's not just a matter of getting blueprints or even a cruise missile to copy, that you really have to build a program.

Over some time. And what I think is really interesting is that explains the surprising lag in cruise missile developments. Why didn't they happen 10 years ago or 20 years ago? But it's not the kind of thing that makes you feel that much better, right? Because it tells you you have a little more time than you think. But it isn't the kind of thing that you can count on to last forever.

And I have been pointing out, if you look at, for example, the National Air Air and Space Intelligence Center's ballistic and cruise missile threat report. The new report has a whole bunch of extra words on the variety of new and frightening cruise missile developments that have happened in the last couple of years. And so unlike in previous years, it really does look like we're starting to see a bunch of new cruise missile programs.

You know, you've got them in. Not only have the UAE and Saudi Arabia bought them, but you've got programs in China, you've got an Indian-Russian program, you've got programs in Pakistan, programs in Iran, and, you know, Now the North Koreans. Although, again, it's a relatively short-range cruise missile. It looks like the kind of thing that is going to support a bigger program over time.

Aaron 12:24

When I add the Turks, Turkey has been clearly invested in cruise missiles, and they've been talking about, if you can believe it, extending the range out to 2,500 kilometers of their cruise missile that's under development.

Jeffrey 12:37

Yeah, well, and the South Koreans have been showing off. I left out a lot of the Allied capabilities, which was probably biased of me. But yeah, the South Koreans have been showing off cruise missiles, and that's definitely gotten the North Koreans' attention.

Aaron 12:49

Yeah, I know. And if I'm remembering correctly, a fellow arms control wonk contributor, Joshua Pollack, gave a wonderful presentation at Wilton Park when I was there. About subtle signaling on the South Korean side with its cruise missiles about being able to conduct decapitating strikes on what appeared to be North Korean leadership.

Jeffrey 13:10

Yeah, you know, that's something Josh and I were working on together. I have a version of that talk, too. It's really interesting, without totally distracting from the podcast. Yeah. If you look at the target that the South Koreans use for their cruise missile tests, it's shaped like the Kumsusan Palace in North Korea, where the mausoleum is and where the North Korean leaders go.

And so the North Koreans took it as an assassination threat.

Aaron 13:38

Yeah, the video, for people who haven't seen it, the cruise missile goes right through a window.

Jeffrey 13:44

If I'm remembering the video correctly, John... Well, it goes into the center of the target, but then they accompanied with that in case that wasn't, you know, like the weird shape of the target, wasn't enough of a clue. Then they released a statement where, and they've done it a couple times now, where they say, it can fly through Kim Jong-un's window.

Oh, that's it, that's it. Yeah, yeah, which really gets to the stability problem that cruise missiles generate, right? So that's probably what we should talk about. Yeah, I mean... Because they're bad.

Aaron 14:12

Yeah, I mean, I think for U.S. interests, it's the challenges they play for defenses. Dennis talks a lot about this in his book, or at least in the seminar I took with him as well, is that they're low and slow. Skimming capability poses a lot of problems for radar to pick them up and really taxes ballistic missile defenses, or just missile defenses, not ballistic missile defenses.

So you both increase the area with which you have to defend because your radar has to look both high and low, as well as in the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, you know, He points out in his book that the U.S. had success against the interception of Iraqi ballistic missiles, but Iraq's very crude ballistic missiles were able to penetrate our defenses.

That could have been catastrophic for the invasion in terms of a PR standpoint if we would have lost a lot of troops and could have changed the whole narrative of the early phase of the war. I do think they pose unique challenges.

Jeffrey 15:18

Well, the scenarios that I tend to worry about are decapitating strikes. Because the problem that we have with North Korea is that they have a tiny nuclear arsenal, but they seem to act as though it's a shield that protects them. So they can do things like sink ships, shell islands, just generally engage in bad behavior. And there's not much South Korea can do about it.

Because, well, do you want to have a big war that ends with a nuclear use? And so it's sort of the stability-instability paradox, where you can have really intense conventional confrontations that are kind of enabled by nuclear weapons. And the Pakistanis may do this to some extent, and I think the North Koreans do it. And so the natural response is to think like, well...

How do I deal with that problem if I'm South Korea? And it's like, well, if I can kill Kim Jong-un before he can jab his fat little finger on the button, then suddenly they don't have the deterrent they think they do. And so I think that's where cruise missiles come into play, which is cruise missiles offer the ability to have a stealthy capability that can, even if you can't defeat the forces of the other country, you can knock out their leadership so they can't command them.

And I think that that's precisely why India and South Korea are so interested in them. But I also think it's why the Russians are spending so much money on cruise missiles. There have been reports that they are deploying nuclear-armed cruise missiles on attack submarines and sailing them up and down the East Coast, precisely because that would be a threat against Washington that we couldn't defend.

And it went unreported, other than people kind of made fun of it. But there's this thing called J-LENS, which is an airship, it's a blimp, that's supposed to provide missile warning over Washington. I'm pretty sure J-LENS is about Russian cruise missiles. So these things can be super destabilizing, right? Because they... They have this at least theoretical capability to decapitate, is the phrase, a leadership.

Aaron 17:33

So they're bad. Yeah, and one of the things they've done is it's almost replicating our tactics, U.S. tactics. We, as the Cold War faded, in our arsenal, the Tomahawk has grown, has gained particular salience for all types of conflicts that we've been engaged in. We've turned to them for multiple reasons. Multiple different scenarios. One of them is what I was arguing with the potential to strike Syria after the August 21st chemical weapons attack is the ability to put a cruise missile, as the South Koreans aptly put in their thing, or as we like to say, through a window.

And the feeling that you could place on a potential adversary, that you could actually decapitate him, is I think exactly what you're saying, is extremely destabilizing. And I think we're slightly saved in this regard. It's because the longer-range cruise missiles, the more advanced engines, still largely remain under the purview of the US, the Russians, and the Chinese.

And Dennis points this out in this book as well. So are we at a stage where it's shorter-range cruise missiles that are going to proliferate, whereas the knowledge you need to develop longer-range ones will still... Be out of reach for certain states. And does that save us a little bit, or does that create a whole set of challenges for U.S. security policymakers?

Jeffrey 19:02

So yes and no. By the way, I looked it up. It's high bypass turbofan engines. I actually looked it up in something I wrote, which is totally embarrassing.

Aaron 19:09

I couldn't remember either.

Jeffrey 19:11

But I know when I wrote it, I was right. And then that was the end. I didn't have to think about it anymore. So I think that We are in an interim stage where the proliferation of technologies is of really long range, say more than 1,000 kilometer range cruise missiles, is still the U.S., very advanced industrial states, Russia, China, so on, right?

But I think that that's only... An interim stage. So the Iranians are talking about a 2,000 kilometer range cruise missile. The... Russians and Indians are developing a cruise missile with a much shorter range, but it's a cooperative program, which I think is ultimately intended to create an Indian cruise missile industry that's capable of doing more. So I see the technology starting to bleed out.

So yeah, I don't think tomorrow we're going to wake up and have 50 cruise missile programs. But I think, you know, we're looking at 10, and you know, maybe in five years it'll be 20, and so that's that's something that's worrisome. And it's particularly irksome. I don't know if you've seen this, but the Russians are marketing this Club-K cruise missile, which is a shorter-range cruise missile, but it comes in a disguised as a shipping container. Yeah, I've definitely seen this, and I call it, you know, it's.

Aaron 20:45

That seems like the marketing people by whoever makes it said like we're going to really either upset the Americans or this is going to be our entree point to a rogue state nation. This is the thing we want to market all over the place. I think it's compelling.

Jeffrey 21:00

What I love about it is the motto is every state has a right to independence. So every time I see that, I put an asterisk and it's like may not apply in the near abroad. Yeah, exactly right.

Aaron 21:12

Yeah, so that kind of thing makes it hard to do arms control.

Jeffrey 21:17

I mean, they're by definition designed to be easy to hide. Right. But they're also designed for export. And we've had this experience arguing with the British and the French when they've exported very capable cruise missiles to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. They say they do things to reduce the range so they don't violate the MTCR. The Missile Technology Control Regime, which is a voluntary guideline on exporting such things.

But, you know, like, what, maybe they put in a smaller fuel tank? Like, maybe the... I don't know how... I don't know how much confidence I'd place in the range reductions. So, yeah, I think as an interim measure, things are not out of hand yet. But I don't like the way this situation is evolving, and it doesn't seem to me that whether your interest is in missile defense or arms control, that we have policies and programs in place that deal with this reality.

Aaron 22:16

Yeah, no, the way I think about it is it almost doesn't matter. I think of it similar as to the armed drone, the proliferation of armed drones. There are similar technologies, as you know. For the foreseeable future, what I think of emerging cruise missile or emerging drone states is that they're going to use these things locally. But as a country with global security requirements, How countries use these things even locally, even if they have 150 kilometers range, can indirectly affect us.

That's why I think about conflicts in maybe your neck of the woods in Asia or conflicts in my neck of the woods, which is the Middle East, which can start off as small. I mean, let's take the UAE and their cruise missile. How do the Iranians feel about that? And what if they actually started to use that?

How would the... You know, U.S. have to come to somebody's defense so somebody starts shooting. And so I don't actually see much of a difference in the range requirements on these missiles in so much as that the proliferation of missiles can inherently be destabilizing. And because of our security commitments, we have a lot of interest in stable environments globally.

Jeffrey 23:25

Yeah, precisely. I mean, the situation I always worry about in South Korea is that the North Koreans push the South Koreans too far. They sink one too many ships, or they shell one too many islands, or they blow up another plane, or they just do something really annoying. And the South Korean president decides to take a swipe at Kim Jong-un with a cruise missile.

And then maybe they miss. Yeah. Right? And then you've got a general war on the peninsula, and who's involved, right?

Aaron 23:57

Right.

Jeffrey 23:57

The U.S. So... While I'm very sympathetic to how frustrated the South Koreans must be with the North Koreans, just the analyst in me looks at the way these technologies interact with the animosities, and I can, like, only see bad things happening.

Aaron 24:15

No, I'm the same way. So, I mean, I think, and maybe we'll wrap up here, is that the... No, we're ending on a... No, no, I'm going positive.

Jeffrey 24:23

I'm going positive.

Aaron 24:24

I'm going positive. You know, is there... You know, is the MTCR... Can we get a better MTCR or something to limit these things? Or can there be ways that we could put pressure on potential suppliers to limit the spread of these cruise missiles? Or is the cat already out of the bag? We may go negative. I may go negative, even though the U.S. qualifies.

Well, look, I'm all for buying time, right?

Jeffrey 24:52

Because who knows what happens down the line. But I do think that we have to find... Some way to deal with the cruise missile problem in the US-Russia relationship, which is going to be a bilateral arms control issue. It's not merely one of exports. It's really our own stability problems. And I think if we can deal with that, which is pretty grim because we probably can't deal with that.

Aaron 25:14

Probably not.

Jeffrey 25:15

But then there is this second set of conversations about why Russian and Chinese cruise missiles keep ending up in places we don't like. And I think if you could slow that process down, you might give yourself enough time to deal with some of these situations, right? I mean... The Iranian cruise missiles are really only a problem because of Iran's problems with its neighbors.

And so maybe in 20 years we can fix that. So I'm a big fan of trying to slow that. But then over the long term, the cat will eventually get out of the bag. We have to, I think, do a lot more than we do on. I mean, I find it interesting that in Washington, the people who love missile defense, what they love is ballistic missile defense.

And it's seemingly impossible to get them to care about cruise missile defense. Even though I think that's probably a much more pressing threat, particularly for forces deployed abroad, maybe because it takes more money from ballistic missile defense. But yeah, I think over the long run, you're going to have blimps over Washington, which strikes some people as weird, but I don't have a better solution right now.

Aaron 26:29

Yeah, no, I mean, I'm in favor of its J-lens.

Jeffrey 26:32

You can apparently see it from the upper deck at Camden Yards. Oh, really? I've been told. I don't know if it's true. I haven't been to a game in years.

Aaron 26:41

Well, you know, I'm in favor of it. I think actually this would be something that the U.S. should focus on. It doesn't get enough attention. But, you know, I do see a little bit of change, although the main emphasis, as you said, is always on ballistic missile defense. And, you know, who knows if that's going to change, but I think it should.

And maybe we need to have more blips flying over certain US cities for defense against container cruise missiles to guarantee independence for other countries. Is that positive? Is that a positive note?

Jeffrey 27:13

Yeah, you know, I like blimps. Blimps are cool, right?

Aaron 27:16

Yeah, yeah, blimps are cool. I guess we can end it by the U.S. lost today's match, but still goes into the round of 16. And I think we're playing the Belgians, right?

Jeffrey 27:25

I think it looks likely. There may be some theoretical chance that the Algerians can surpass them. Yeah.

Aaron 27:34

Well, you know, I like our chances. I think we can pull off a miracle here. So let's go Team USA in the World Cup.

Jeffrey 27:42

And then after that, it's probably like Argentina or some horrible buzzsaw like that, I think, is like who we're likely to face if we survive the Belgians.

Aaron 27:51

Now we're going negative again. Let's end it again. Let's end it off here. Let's say congratulations to Team USA, and thanks for chatting today.

Jeffrey 28:00

Okay. Good luck here.

Aaron 28:01

Have a good one. Bye-bye.