Are Some of North Korea's Long-Range Missiles Fakes? 322
gbrumfiel writes "North Korea has not been shy in announcing plans to destroy the United States, but questions remain over whether it has the nukes or the missiles to do so. Now NPR reports on open-source intelligence showing that one of the North's most 'advanced' weapons might actually be a decoy. Six KN-08 missiles were paraded last year, but each showed differences in the way they were assembled. Is it all a bluff? Or are the missiles part of a real program?"
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
The thing is, it isn't just the shells. There are major differences between what was paraded around, like the length of stage assemblies, and where fuel valves are.
They could be iterative design mockups for producing the real thing, or it could be a massive display of horseshit for propaganda.
Re:Solution: decapitation (Score:2, Informative)
Alas, it is you who are revisionist. Try checking the facts [snopes.com]. Deal with it.
Probably fake, but it doesn't matter (Score:4, Informative)
There's a good chance that the missiles shown in a parade were fakes. Many early missile designs didn't travel well. The US Atlas ICBM had walls so thin it had to be pressurized to keep it from collapsing. When not pressurized, it had to be held in a fixture that kept it under tension. North Korea's missiles are roughly at the Atlas level of technology - they're liquid fueled. Putting them on off-road trucks is not too useful, since they have to be accompanied by liquid oxygen trucks. They need a launch complex.
The Atlas was a good booster. Variants of the design were used into the 1990s. (There's a current "Atlas" booster, but it's a full redesign.) North Korea clearly has boosters in that league - they've launched several. They're just not well suited to parade displays. So it's quite likely that, for parade purposes, dummies were used.