Tag: missile tests

This is just all the more reason why countries should not be giving aid to North Korea, clearly the Kim regime believes firing missiles is more important than buying food:

North Korea launched at least 23 missiles on Wednesday and six more on Thursday, adding to its already record-breaking pace of weapons tests this year. Many were nuclear-capable ballistic missiles designed to destroy South Korean and U.S. targets.

They likely include a developmental Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile, surface-to-air missiles and a variety of short-range ballistic missiles. North Korea has a reputation for frequent missile tests, but it has never launched that many missiles in a single day.

Soo Kim, a security analyst at the California-based RAND Corporation, said the cost of a North Korean missile test could range between several million dollars to $10 million, which would be lower than similar tests in other countries, partly because North Korean labor is cheap.

Bruce Bennet, another expert at the RAND Corporation, told Radio Free Asia that the short-range missiles Wednesday cost between $2 million to $3 million each and the total cost for the day was somewhere between $50 million and $75 million. RFA said the maximum estimate is about the amount of money that North Korea spent to import rice from China in 2019 to cover grain shortages that year.

Stars & Stripes

You can read much more at the link.

North Korea’s war on fish continued this weekend:

North Korea fired four short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) toward the Yellow Sea Saturday, the South Korean military said.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launches from Tongrim County in North Pyongyan Province between around 11:32 a.m. and 11:59 a.m.

The missiles flew about 130 kilometers at an apogee of 20 km with a top speed of Mach 5, it added. 

The North’s latest provocation came on the last day of the extended large-scale combined air drills of the South and the United States.

On Saturday two B-1B strategic bombers joined the Vigilant Storm exercise alongside four South Korean F-35A stealth fighter jets and 4 U.S. F-16 fighters, the JCS said.

It marked the first time the B-1B Lancer has been deployed to the Korean Peninsula since 2017, in a demonstration of Washington’s firm commitment to extended deterrence for South Korea and the allies’ combined defense posture, JCS added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This weekend North Korea decided to attack the fish in the East Sea again:

North Korea on Sunday launched eight short-range ballistic missiles off its eastern coast, according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The missiles were fired between 9:08 a.m. and 9:43 a.m. from the Sunan area, where North Korea’s international airport is located, the Joint Chiefs said in a text message to reporters. Further details were not immediately available from the military.

South Korea’s military is prepared for additional missile tests and is “maintaining a full readiness posture” and working closely with U.S. forces, the Joint Chiefs said.

The launches mark the 17th round of missile tests so far this year by North Korea and its first in June.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

If this was an ICBM test the fact that it did not rise as high in apogee as other tests indicates something did not go right. For example the March ICBM test had an apogee of 4,475 kilometers. This test had an apogee of 780 kilometers:

North Korea’s state-controlled news outlets were unusually silent Thursday about the country’s latest ballistic missile test the previous day.

There had been no related reports by the secretive nation’s media, including the Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun, as of 5 p.m., unlike Pyongyang’s usual practice of quickly boasting publicly about its major weapons tests.

On Wednesday, the North launched a ballistic missile, which flew 470 kilometers at a maximum altitude of 780 km before falling into the East Sea, according to South Korea’s military. Some informed sources said it seems to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired at a lofted angle.

The North’s media has usually carried reports, coupled with a number of photos, of such major missile tests the next morning, except for failed launches like the one in mid-March.

Observers here raised the possibility that the North failed to achieve its goal in the latest missile firing, the 14th of this year.

Military authorities here appeared intent on figuring out why the North’s state media had not reported on the missile launch.

“What appears to be certain is that the North did not conduct the missile launch at its fullest capacity,” a military source said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The fish in the waters around Korea were under extra attack yesterday from both North and South Korean missile launches:

The Korean Peninsula was the site of dueling launches on Wednesday as North Korea fired two tactical ballistic missiles around mid-day, followed by South Korea testing a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) later in the afternoon.  
   
The North fired first on Wednesday, sending two ballistic missiles into the waters east of the Korean Peninsula around 12:38 p.m. and 12:43 p.m., according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).  
   
The JCS said the missiles flew a distance of approximately 800 kilometers (500 miles) while reaching an altitude of 60 kilometers (37 miles).  
   
Less than three hours later, in the afternoon, South Korea followed with a scheduled submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test, according to the Defense Ministry.  
   
In addition to the SLBM, the South tested two different types of missiles on Wednesday: a long-range air-to-surface missile and a supersonic anti-ship missile, according to military authorities. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but I think it is likely the North Koreans are just making a statement that if the ROK’s are allowed to fire ballistic missiles then we are going to as well. Additionally the Kim regime is probably trying to take away headlines from the ROK for successfully testing their SLBM which is a feat the North Koreans have not been able to master yet.

If DPRK is saying they will allow monitors in and inform ICAO of missile tests, does not bode well for freeze. Perhaps timed to apply pressure on admin to come to agreement with DPRK while hinting could restart tests in future under ICAO monitoring.

— Nathan J Hunt (@ISNJH) August 19, 2018

Mr. Shea Cotton who is a research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies noticed something that North Korea watchers have known for a long time, missile testing tends to slow in the winter:

Tuesday, November 14 marked 60 days since North Korea’s most recent missile test. Earlier this year, between March and May, North Korea was launching an average of one missile every two weeks. Now after about two months, the silence seems deafening.

Can we credit the slow down to America’s policies working? Was there a diplomatic breakthrough with the regime? Or has Kim Jong Un seen the error of his ways and is abandoning or backtracking on his missile program? Probably not.

Instead, this is likely part of an annual slowdown in testing we’ve observed now in North Korea for several years.

A look back at missile testing in North Korea under Kim Jong Un demonstrates the trend. The table below depicts a quarterly breakdown of North Korea’s nuclear capable missile tests since 2012.

A few things are clear from this. First, Kim Jong Un stepped on the gas pedal in 2014. In fact, Kim Jong Un has carried out more tests than his father and grandfather combined. Second, and more important to this topic, North Korea slows things down in the fourth quarter of every year. On average, we see about an 80% drop in tests from Q3 to Q4. Every so often North Korea will conduct a test in Q4, but that number is only a small fraction compared to past quarters.

Harvest season

But what then, explains this consistent drop? While difficult to say for sure, the most likely explanation we have is that North Korea’s resources are tied up in the harvest.  [Forbes]

You can read more at the link, but the priority on the annual harvest is part of the reason for the decrease in missile testing, there are a few other reasons as well.

Mr. Cotton in his article says the trend analysis shows that testing will pick up again in February.  February just so happens to be the lead to the annual Key Resolve military exercise.  Every year Key Resolve starts tends to start an annual provocation cycle with North Korea then the UFG exercises tends to be when the provocation cycle slows down.  For example this year the last missile test occurred on September 14th; the annual UFG military exercise concluded in early September.

There are other reasons as well, but the long gap between major US-ROK military exercises, the annual harvest, the winter training cycle for the North Korean military, as well as poor weather all play into the decrease in missile testing.

Via the Washington Post.