Expert Says North Korea ICBM Testing Would Likely Take Many Failures Before Becoming Successful

Yonhap has a good interview published with an aerospace engineer that outlines what North Korea’s testing of the ICBM capability would likely look like:

John Schilling, an aerospace engineer with expertise in the North’s missile programs, said that the North’s ICBM test could involve a missile variant of the space launch vehicle Unha or the road-mobile KN-08 missile or its upgraded version KN-14.

A test of the Unha rocket fitted with a reentry vehicle large enough for a nuclear warhead would likely work, but it would put “an end to any pretense or hope of a peaceful space program,” the expert said.  (……..)

Schilling also noted the first American ICBM, the SM-65 Atlas, failed 26 seconds into its maiden flight and eight tests were conducted over the course of a year, with only two fully successful. The first all-up test of the competing SM-68 Titan was even shorter, exploding on the launch pad, he said.

“We should expect North Korean ICBMs to follow a similar path — a series of early failures leading to an operational capability even with a spotty testing record,” the expert said.

The North is unlikely to conduct an ICBM test as frequently as it did with the intermediate-range Musudan missile that was tested eight times between April and October last year, he said.

“Pyongyang can afford to keep up that pace in a full-scale ICBM development program. Its aerospace industry hasn’t demonstrated the production capacity needed to test an ICBM every month,” he said. ” One test every three to six months would be more realistic, at least in the long run, so this is not a process that will be completed in 2017.”

Should the North decide to test the KN-08 or KN-14, it is expected to use existing launch sites, rather than a mobile launcher, in order to reduce chances of failure and to learn as much as possible from the failures, he said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.