Report Says North Korea’s Musudan Missile Blew On Its Launcher
This makes the missile test failure even worse for the North Koreans if true:
North Korea’s failed launch of its Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile last week sparked a huge fireball that damaged the launcher and could have also injured or killed missile technicians on the ground, a news report said Wednesday.
The missile blew up about 300 feet above the ground, shortly after Friday’s launch, and U.S. strategic defense surveillance systems, both airborne and space-based, videotaped the explosion, the Washington Free Beacon reported, citing U.S. defense officials.
Two road-mobile Musudan launchers were set up for the test, but the second was not fired after the explosion, the report said. It also cited a diplomatic source as saying that the likely cause of the explosion was a faulty fuel system or turbo pump failure.
The Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile is an indigenous variant of the Russian SS-N-6 submarine-launched ballistic missile, known by Moscow as the R-27, which the North obtained covertly from Russia sometime in the 1990s, the report said. Â [Yonhap]
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