Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

North Korea could soon be able to target US with missiles: study

"If you can get a missile aboard a warship, in particular aboard a submarine...you can move your submarine to strike at targets such as Hawaii or the United States, just as examples. Whereas it would be much more difficult to actually develop a ground-launched missile to achieve that sort of a range," Kemp said.

Until now only the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China have been known to possess submarine-launched nuclear weapons, although there has been speculation that Israel has a similar capability.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=558625§ion=news

Mr. Kemp says the sea-launched missile would be the most threatening.

Jane's says the next step for North Korea will be to build submarines capable of launching the new missiles. It is not clear how long that would take. But the magazine says North Korea did gain technological insight from some decommissioned Soviet submarines it bought from Japanese scrap metal dealers 12 years ago.
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=AA9B7B6A-E373-4C15-BC2ED50E203A2BEF

I am reading that North Korea already has the new diesel-electric submarines which, when running just on batteries, are much more difficult to find than those always loud Soviet nukes. I would be surprised if they could not already launch the new missiles from submarines.

The Chinese, Iranians and North Koreans keep their subs within territorial waters most of the time. They won’t come out on the high seas to play with our ASW people. So we have to arrange play dates with allies who operate diesel-electric subs. These allies usually kick out butts, because they practice sneaking around all the time, and our ASW folks get too little practice to deal with these experienced crews.
#msg-3692646

-Am




North Korea could soon be able to target US with missiles: study
(AFP)

3 August 2004



LONDON - North Korea is developing a pair of new ballistic missile systems, including a sea-launched model, which could soon enable the Stalinist state to target the United States, a leading military publication said on Tuesday.


“Both these new land and sea-based systems appreciably expand the ballistic missile threat presented by the DPRK,” a report in Jane’s Defence Weekly said, using the official name for the country, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The version of the missile capable of being launched from submarines or ships “is potentially the most threatening”, Janes’ said.

“It would fundamentally alter the missile threat posed by the DPRK and could finally provide its leadership with something that it has long sought to obtain -- the ability to directly threaten the continental US.”

Information about North Korea’s military capabilities in invariably sketchy given the ultra-secretive nature of its hardline communist regime, ruled for the past half-century by father-and-son dictators Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il.

However the country is known to possess ballistic missile technology. In August 1998, Pyongyang stunned the world by test-launching a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan, officially claiming it was a satellite launch.

Four years later the United States said North Korea had acknowledged it was developing nuclear weapons, prompting a series of as-yet unsuccessful talks involving Washington as well as China, South Korea, Russia and Japan.

According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, North Korea is working on a pair of missile systems based on Russian technology, completely different to the Taepodong-1 and its mooted successor, the Taepodong-2, reportedly being tested.

The new systems are based on the defunct Soviet R-27 submarine-launched ballistic missile, known to NATO at the time as the SS-N-6, Jane’s said.

The land-based model has an estimated range of 2,500 to 4,000 kilometres (1,560 to 2,500 miles), bringing into range all of East Asia, as well as Hawaii and US military bases on the Pacific islands of Okinawa and Guam.

The sea-launched model could be fired at least 2,500 kilometres, the article said.



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