Should North Korea’s Musudan Missile Be Dismissed After Test Failure?

The North Koreans recently test for the first time their Musudan missile which has the potential range of targeting the US island of Guam:

North Korea conducted its first test-launch of the medium-range ballistic missile Musudan early Friday from its east coast, but the launch ended in failure, officials said.

“North Korea seems to have tried a missile launch from the East Sea area in the early morning today, but it is presumed to have failed,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Sources said the launched missile was the Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), also known as the BM-25.

The missile lifted off at 5:30 a.m. but deviated from a “normal” trajectory, a JCS official told reporters.

After their joint assessment, South Korea and the United States concluded the launch as a failure, he added without elaborating further.

One military official said the IRBM disappeared from the South Korean side’s surveillance radar shortly after liftoff.

“It is highly likely that it may have exploded in the air. A further analysis is under way,” according to the official.

It was North Korea’s first test-launch of a Musudan missile, which the North is believed to have deployed against South Korea and other countries since 2007. The North has reportedly deployed some 30 Musudan missiles.  [Yonhap]

Reuters is reporting that it blew up on the launch pad which seems to contradict the ROK military saying that it fell off of their radar screens shortly after launch:

A U.S. government source told Reuters on Friday the missile never got off the launch pad, instead bursting into flames on the ground. It was not yet clear what caused the failure but further tests are expected, said the source, who asked not to be named.  [Reuters]

Whatever the failure was, this does not mean the North Koreans did not receive valuable data from this launch.  So hopefully people are not too quick to dismiss the North’s Musudan missile threat because of this one test.  It took them multiple launches to perfect their Taepodong-2 rocket technology which has had two straight successful launches putting objects into space.  If they continue to test the Musudan which I would think they will likely do, they are bound to figure out the errors that occurred in this test and perfect the technology.