Real Korea Worry: Chem-Bio

North Korea's newly-tested nuke is bad news, for sure. But the bigger worry, says Popular Mechanics is the "huge arsenal of mass casualty weapons" that Kim & Co. have been assembling for 45 years: biological and chemical arms.

While it would be foolish not to be gravely concerned about North Korea's purported development of an offensive nuclear capability, the actual threat for the foreseeable future is, arguably, minimal. North Korea's threadbare economy (it has a GDP of $40 billion - compare that to California's gross state product on $1.55 trillion per year) is incapable of maintaining an effective nuclear weapons program. Its nuclear science is at best second rate and, certainly, is second hand.

In contrast, as one North Korea expert explained to me, CBW is mass destruction on the cheap. "Biological and chemical weapons are very inexpensive, many, many times cheaper than nuclear." Another expert gave this grim assessment: "The use of anthrax is a distinct possibility for this nation [North Korea]..."

The consensus among weapons inspectors, intelligence analysts, academics and others I have interviewed—–which is backed up by the available open source material—-is that North Korea has developed anthrax, plague and botulism toxin as weapons and has extensively researched at least six other germs including smallpox and typhoid. It is also believed to have 5,000 tons or more of mustard gas, sarin nerve agent and phosgene (a choking gas). The Center for Nonproliferation Studies says North Korea ranks "amongst the largest possessors of chemical weaponry in the world." South Korea's military estimates half of North's long-range missiles and 30 percent of its artillery are CBW capable...

Yet the West's myopic obsession with North Korea's nuclear efforts has allowed this far more real and equally lethal threat to escape into the shadows: a WMD program, backed by in excess of 13,000 specially trained troops, capable of devastating its southern neighbor, attacking U.S. troops in Asia and disrupting the regional economy in ways that could see the U.S. and other western nations plunged into crisis.

Yes, the new [United Nations] resolution 1718(2006) includes a reference to biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, but only as an afterthought, and the resolution exists only because of the nukes and their perceived threat. Unfortunately, in this case, as with others, the world is overly focused on a potential retina-searing nuclear detonation, without properly appreciating the very clear-and-present CBW killer that exists just a virtual button's push away from Kim Jong Il's perfectly manicured fingernails.

If the whole thing sounds a little hysterical to you, chem-bio guru Jason Sigger says: get real. The story is "100 percent right in regards to N. Korea. And you can extend that argument to China, Iran, Syria, Israel, Pakistan, and India, and potentially in the near future (because of Iran), Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others."

Seriously, I see this all the time in the "combating WMD" community. The arms control and counterproliferation people talk "WMD" but the subtext is "nuke." Even the majority of the consequence management tasks are now "dirty bomb" or "improvised nuclear device" scenarios... [the] mentality is [that] nukes are the only thing that can drastically affect US military power in any region of the world.

But there are other threats, too.

Nork Test: No Big Whoop?

"There is no question that the political and security implications of the [recent North Korean nuclear] test are huge and almost entirely negative," writes Ivan Oelrich, over at the Strategic Security Blog. "The technical significance of the test is somewhat less than meets the eye."

[A week ago,] the outside world knew that the North Koreans had plutonium available from fuel rods that had been removed from the reactor at Yongbyon. We knew that at least some of the plutonium had been separated out of the fuel rods and, since separation is a fairly straightforward process, it was a fair assumption that most or all of the plutonium had been separated. So we knew about their plutonium supply (and the test tells us nothing more about that), but another key question remained: Could they fashion the plutonium into a bomb?

...Before the test, we did not know whether the North Koreans could build an implosion bomb or not. Had the test been successful, we would now know that they could, although we would still not know how close they were to a useable weapon; their test device might have weighed tons and been a once off, rigged up, laboratory experiment. But the test was not successful, so we still don’t know whether the North Koreans can build a workable implosion bomb. Presumably the North Koreans learned something from the test so the probability of the next test being successful is somewhat higher than the probability that the first test would have been successful. This is not much of difference, leaving us in pretty much the same position we were in before the test...

Why might the test have failed? An implosion bomb uses conventional high explosives to compress plutonium until it becomes “critical,” that is, it will sustain a run-away chain reaction. The pressure from the conventional explosives has to be carefully controlled, for example, it must be symmetric or else it is like squeezing a ball of putty: pressure on one side doesn’t compress the plutonium, it just squirts it out the other side. The most likely reason for the failure is some problem with the compression and there is any number of reasons why the compression might not be adequate. If the test were carefully instrumented (which is not necessarily the case), the North Koreans should be able to narrow down the cause, which will give them a much improved chance for success with their next test.

UPDATE 10/14/06 11:20 AM: "Initial environmental samples collected by a U.S. military aircraft detected signs of radiation over the Sea of Japan, possibly confirming North Korea's nuclear test," the Washington Post reports.

UPDATE 10/15/06 7:06 PM: "The proposition that the apparently low yield of the test is a failure is not self evident," says Defense Tech pal John Pike, pointing to this Weekly Standard piece. After all, Pike notes, the yield on the American B61 nuke can range anywhere from a third of a kiloton to more than 350 kt.

UPDATE 10/15/06 7:23 PM: No excerpt will do justice to this epic retelling of North Korea 50-year quest for the Bomb. So just go and read the whole thing.

Big War Machines Pushed for Korea Fight

There are still a whole heap of unknowns, in the wake of North Korea's nuclear test. But here's something you can take to the bank: every admiral, every Air Force general, and every Congresscritter with a big, hulking, weapon system is going to crow about how his gazillion-dollar machine is the key to fixing the Korean problem.

Even before Kim's October surprise, Air Force officials like Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap Jr. were railing against "boots-on-the-ground zealots" and "neo-Luddites" who "quot[e] counterinsurgency manuals from the horse cavalry era." Instead, Dunlap insisted, we should be pouring money into "air power — our most effective national security component."

With the Army lobbying for a bigger chunk of the Pentagon budget, expect the volume on these Air Force and Navy-first screams to be turned up several notches in the months to come. Wanna shell the Norks' nuke facilities from way out in the sea? Then you need a big ol' DD(X) destroyer to do the shelling. Attacking from the air? For that, you just have to have a next-generation, long-range bomber. Oh, and a whole bunch of conventionally-armed Trident ballistic missiles, too. And so on...

Of course, "American air units in South Korea, Japan, and the United States, plus the US Third and Seventh Fleets, are available to blockade North Korea and strike at targets of opportunity" today, Arms and Influence notes.

However, it remains to be seen what opportunities for punitive and disarming strikes exist, or what the North Korean response would be... The facilities are too dispersed, often in the worst kind of geography for precision bombing, mountainous terrain. Even if the US were able to hit every North Korean nuclear and production facility, the obvious question would be, What's next?

We can predict at least one immediate consequence: a North Korean attack on South Korea. Whether the North Korean army tries to seize control of the South, or merely retaliate with conventional and chemical artillery attacks on Seoul and other population centers, the US would need ground forces to take the next step: eliminate the North Korean government. Even with its nuclear fangs removed, the North Korean government would remain a menace to the South, and perhaps would have reasons to try for one last gamble to end the decades-long stalemate on the Korean peninsula...

The United States has an impressive array of carrier battle groups, attack submarines, tactical air assets, and strategic bombers that it can hurl at North Korea. However, the last several years have taught Americans an important lesson about warfare: your own strength matters far less than what you actually do with it.

UPDATE 4:39 PM: The Herald-Tribune has a good rundown of just how piss-poor the Norks' conventional forces really are.

The military in North Korea is by far the largest consumer of the country’s scarce resources. But even so, its combat jet pilots get only about two hours of flying time a month, its soldiers sometimes have to grow their own food, and much of its equipment is old and outclassed by that of its neighbors. According to South Korean and Western experts, if a conventional war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, the best the North Korean military could manage would be to fight to a bloody stalemate.

It is the deep insecurity born of these shortcomings, the experts say, and not any desire to grab attention or gain leverage, that drove President Kim Jong-il’s decision to defy international warnings and declare this week that his country had tested a nuclear weapon.

Nork Fallout: Asia Arms Race?

So here we are, 36 hours later, and everybody is still talking about North Korea's nuclear test. But despite all the nervous chatter, not much has changed, at least in the short term. (Down the road is a much different story.)

Condemnations of the North’s brazen act aside, China is no more willing now than they were last week to risk a collapsed regime on their border - it almost assures a flood of refugees and a US military ally sharing a border with China. The US’s options are similarly limited – even if we know where all their nuclear sites are, it’s unlikely we’d be willing to bet that the unpredictable Kim regime wouldn’t retaliate against Seoul. That leaves us to do what we’ve gotten good at with North Korea: issuing a strong condemnation and then hoping that CNN switches back over to coverage of Jon Benet Ramsey.

The only big potential short term implication is if the international community demonstrates that this test was a fake, or a dud. Then the North will be forced to up the ante to compensate for the embarrassment (just as the nuke test was to compensate for the humiliating failure of the July long range missile test).

The real impact of the Kim's nuclear trial is in the long term. That's when things have the potential to get extremely scary. Not only do you get the possibility of the Norks throwing a nuclear yard sale for terrorists. But for Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, it energizes his push to strengthen Japan’s security capacity like nothing else could have. Abe had already appointed a number of fellow conservatives in Foreign Ministry and Defense positions in the cabinet, he’s declared his intent to modify the constitution’s limitations on Japanese military capacity, and he mooted the possibility for a Japanese pre-emptive strike against North Korea in the aftermath of the July missile tests. The pacifist nature of Japan’s constitution is reasonably well-ingrained in Japanese political culture, and he would have met a lot of resistance in these moves. That resistance will be drastically weakened by the North Korean test. From there, it’s a short logical step to the usual scenarios of a Sino-Japanese arms race in East Asia. And there's only one word for how that scenario plays out: Gulp.

-- Matthew Tompkins

Korea Nuke: a 'Fizzle?'

In the days ahead, we'll hear all kinds of reasons why the Nork nuke test was so sucktastic. (Suitcase bomb, anyone?) Dicky Destiny -- a.k.a. Dr. George Smith, of GlobalSecurity.org -- has a plausible early candidate: "'fizzle yield'; that is, the smallest nuclear yield [a] particular device could provide."

"... [T]here is a moment when the [bomb's] fissile material becomes critical (projectile still on its way to its destination [in a gun-type weapon], or only a small part of the material compressed [in an implosion-type weapon]) and the time it reaches its intended state. During this interval, the degree of supercriticality is building up toward its final value. If a chain reaction were initiated by neutrons from some other source during this period, the yield realized would be much smaller --possibly a great deal smaller -- than the nominal yield. Such an event is referred to as preinitiation (or sometimes predetonation).

... "If the [bomb's] assembly velocities (of the projectile or material driven by an implosion) are quite low, the earliest possible preinitiation could lead to an energy release (equivalent weight of high explosive) not many times larger than the weight of the device."

Other parts of the discussion on bomb design obstacles, also presented at the seminar, indicated that yields lower by a factor of ten in crude designs can be indicative of fizzles. What information has been published on the North Korean test falls into this range.

Summarized, there are certain number of things that can go wrong when firing your first atomic bomb, particularly when using a crude design. And one might expect to see them from a weird and crazy hermit nation, like North Korea, endeavoring to enter the nuclear club.

NORK Nuclear Test: It's A Dud (Updated)

HA HA HA HA.

I -- Jeffrey Lewis, crossposting from Arms Control Wonk -- love the US Geological Survey.

They've published lat/long (41.294 N, 129.134 E) and Mb estimates (4.2) for the North Korean test.

There is lots of data floating around: The CTBTO called it 4.0; The South Koreans report 3.58-3.7.

You're thinking, 3.6, 4.2, in that neighborhood. Seismic scales, like the Richter, are logarithmic, so that neighborhood can be pretty big.

But even at 4.2, the test was probablya dud.

Estimating the yield is tricky business, because it depends on the geology of the test site. The South Koreans called the yield half a kiloton (550 tons), which is more or less -- a factor of two -- consistent with the relationship for tests in that yield range at the Soviet Shagan test site:

Mb = 4.262 + .973LogW

Where Mb is the magnitude of the body wave, and W is the yield.

3.58-3.7 gives you a couple hundred tons (not kilotons), which is pretty close in this business unless you're really math positive. The same equation, given the US estimate of 4.2, yields (pun intended) around a kiloton.

A plutonium device should produce a yield in the range of the 20 kilotons, like the one we dropped on Nagasaki. No one has ever dudded their first test of a simple fission device. North Korean nuclear scientists are now officially the worst ever.

Of course, I want to see what the US IC says. If/when the test vents, we could have some radionuclide data -- maybe in the next 72 hours or so.

But, from the initial data, I'd say someone with no workable nuclear weapons (Kim Jong Il, I am looking at you) should be crapping his pants right now.

First the missile, then the bomb. Got anything else you wanna try out there, chief?

-- Jeffrey Lewis, cross-posted at Arms Control Wonk.com

UPDATE 10/10/06 1:14 AM: Noah here. Looks like the LA and NY Times have both picked up (sorta) on what the good Wonk was sayin'.

Throughout history, the first detonations of aspiring nuclear powers have tended to pack the destructive power of 10,000 to 60,000 tons — 10 to 60 kilotons — of conventional high explosives.

But the strength of the North Korean test appears to have been a small fraction of that: around a kiloton or less, according to scientists monitoring the global arrays of seismometers that detect faint trembles in the earth from distant blasts...

Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of weapons testing at the Pentagon and former director of nuclear testing for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a weapons design center in California, said the small size of the test signaled the possibility of what might be described as a partial success or a partial failure.

“As first tests go, this is smaller and less successful than those of the other nuclear powers,” he said.

Perhaps the North Koreans wanted to keep it small, he added. “But if it turns out to be a kiloton or less,” Dr. Coyle said, “that would suggest that they hoped for more than that and didn’t get it.”

UPDATE 10/10/06 8:45 AM: Rumor alert! Stratfor is pretty sure that the Nork nuke -- "about one-fortieth of the Nagasaki blast" -- was a dud, too. But, just to be on the safe side, the intel service offers up "three possible explanations for the apparently small yield: the North Koreans deliberately detonated a very small device, they tested a larger device but it failed to execute properly, or the explosion was not caused by an atomic device."

Possibly the North Koreans wanted to show that they had the technology but did not want to appear too threatening, so they minimized the size. Or they could be demonstrating the ability to use lower-yield nuclear mines or artillery shells that would protect North Korea by blocking strategic passes into the country, and would possibly threaten Seoul but would not pose a significant threat elsewhere. Also, the water table is high in the area of the blast; maybe they were being careful not to break into the aquifer.

These are all good reasons, but the counterargument is that if you are going to go nuclear, go nuclear. North Korea does not have a pressing need -- or history -- of being subtle, so a small blast doesn't fit in with its plan...

What if the North Koreans didn't go nuclear, but detonated a large chemical explosive in an underground chamber? It would take a lot of explosive to yield that result, but it is not impossible. A chemical explosion would have a different seismic signature than a nuclear one, and therefore geologists should have already discounted this theory; but the analysis is going to take up to two days, according to the White House. It is certainly not beyond the North Koreans to fake a nuclear explosion, and there have been some big explosions in North Korea that have been mistaken, for a short period of time, for something nuclear. But there is no evidence, beyond our speculation, for this theory.

UPDATE 10/10/06 8:51 AM: Interesting counter-argument from Trent Telenko in the comments. Since North Korea has "had the complete design specifications for a Chinese missile-ready nuclear warhead of the plutonium implosion type for years," thanks to the A.Q. Khan network, this dud may be more dangerous than it seems.

Missile Flop: Norks in Tight Spot

The New York Times and others are framing North Korea's busted missile test as a major problem for the U.S. -- especially with China and Russia refusing to take a hard line against Pyongyang, for now. "President Bush and his national security advisers found themselves on Wednesday facing what one close aide described as an array of 'familiar bad choices,'" the Times said.

That seems a little upside-down to me. Isn't Kim Jong-il the one with the bad choices here, now that his supposedly-intercontinental missile flopped less than a minute into its flight?

"Over these past few years, [Kim] has adroitly played his otherwise miserable hand because of two cards that everyone believes he holds—nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Yesterday's dud raises the possibility that the missile card's a bluff, that there may be (as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland) 'no there there,'" says Slate's Fred Kaplan.

"Seems to me their ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] capability has gone no better than sideways the past eight years, if not down," retired Adm. Dennis Blair, a former chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, tells the Washington Post.

"Less threatening, because less capable," agreed Rep. Mark S. Kirk (R-Ill.), who tracks North Korea.

At the same time, South Korea -- which had been keeping the U.S. at arm's length -- is now drawing us in a little closer. Reunification talks with the Norks will continue. But the South is now looking to put some of our short- and intermediate-range anti-missile systems into place. Seoul's "Defense Ministry... announced it plans to introduce 48 Patriot missiles between 2008 and 2009," according to the Chosun Ilbo. "After 2009, it will introduce SM-2 Block-IV sea-to-air interceptor missiles to be carried on Aegis ships to counter the North Korean missile threat."

Japan, meanwhile, is barring North Korea ships and flights -- after agreeing to install new missile interceptors of its own, last month.

So: allies better defended, and adversaries shown to be weak. That's all good news, right?

UPDATE 11:14 AM: Unlike Phil Coyle, William Arkin thinks the American warning system did a good job of picking up on those Nork launches.

Within seconds of North Korean rocket engines igniting on their launch pads, infrared cameras aboard Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites detected the heat and transmitted an alert back to U.S. command centers in Colorado Springs, where the trajectory was calculated and the type of missile determined.

Those U.S. infrared satellites had been primed for over a month by activity at the launch sites, intelligence sources say. Movement was detected by spy satellites and U-2s, signals were intercepted by NSA. North Korea even reportedly issued a standard public "notice to mariners" announcing a military exercise and missile test.

UPDATE 11:39 AM: Plus, the Missile Defense Agency has to be psyched that it didn't have to fire off its ICBM interceptors, since they haven't been successfully tested in nearly four years. "The apparent failure of a North Korean long-range missile gives the Pentagon some breathing room as it prepares two critical tests for a U.S. missile shield," the Wall Street Journal notes.

To bolster military and political confidence in the shield, the Pentagon next month plans to launch an interceptor missile in California to counter a mock enemy missile fired from Alaska. The primary goal of the trial isn't to destroy the dummy warhead, said Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. Instead, it is to test the shield's command-and-control system and ensure that a key radar system tracks the warhead and transmits information to the interceptor.

Later this year, the agency plans a so-called hit-to-kill test that will aim to destroy a dummy warhead. Pentagon officials say the two tests, which will cost between $85 million and $100 million each, make 2006 the key year for validating the missile-shield concept. "We believe that we have demonstrated that the hit-to-kill technology works. What we're going to do is try to show that we can do it reliably and that we can sustain it," Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said in an interview earlier this year.

UPDATE 1:49 PM: One other nice thing about the North Korean launch is that it gives the U.S. military a whole lot of data about a missile it didn't know much about before. Thanks, Kim!

Ballistic Missiles: Not Just For Norks

While the world is focused on North Korea and its Taepodongs, the Chinese military has reportedly been refining its own ballistic missiles. But whereas the Nork missiles were really only intended as diplomatic leverage rather than for actual military operations, the Chinese missiles are designed to actually work against a specific set of military targets: U.S. ships, especially aircraft carriers.

"Since the mid-1990s, reports have indicated Chinese interest in modifying DF-15 tactical (600 kilometer) and DF-21 (2,500 kilometer) intermediate-range ballistic missiles as antiship weapons, using radar or infrared guidance," naval expert Norman Friedman writes in this month's Proceedings. (Not yet online.)

Friedman says that ballistic missiles are effective anti-ship weapons because they exploit a gap in the anti-air coverage of U.S. warships, which are optimized to defend against low-flying cruise missiles.

"The main effect of a tactical ballistic-missile threat would be to make anti-ballistic weapons such as the [Raytheon] SM-3 much more important for Fleet air defense."

In other words, those interceptors the Navy was planning to use to shoot down Nork terror weapons might be handier as a routine defense against Chinese anti-ship missiles.

But don't go investing in Raytheon stocks quite yet. The Chinese missiles rely on a sophisticated satellite targeting system that probably isn't in place ... and might never be.

This [missile] program, if indeed it exists, may be connected to an ongoing Chinese satellite surveillance program, which reportedly will consist of four radar and four electro-optical satellites.

[But] it is not ... clear whether the [potential] Chinese satellite system is intended primarily for ocean surveillance.

Remember that the Chinese military procurement system was initially modeled on that of the Soviet Union, and that probably it has changed a lot less than the rest of Chinese society. To what extent would the Chinese field an antiship ballistic missile even though the associated targeting system(s) were either not ready or would never enter service?

Moreover, Friedman adds, even if the satellites are pointed at the ocean, telling an aircraft carrier from a civilian tanker ship is difficult for all but the most sophisticated sensors. In the end, Friedman is skeptical that the Chinese can effectively target whatever ballistic anti-ship missiles they possess.

-- David Axe

Norks Launch Missile Barrage; ICBM Fails

"North Korea test-fired at least six missiles over the Sea of Japan on Wednesday morning, including an intercontinental ballistic missile that apparently failed or was aborted 42 seconds after it was launched," the Times is reporting.

Of the launchings, intelligence officials focused most of their attention on the intercontinental missile, called the Taepodong 2, which American spy satellites have been watching on a remote launching pad for more than a month.

It is designed to be capable of reaching Alaska, and perhaps the West Coast of the United States, but American officials who tracked its launching said it fell into the Sea of Japan before its first stage burned out.

"The Taepodong obviously was a failure — that tells you something about capabilities," Stephen Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, told reporters in a phone call on Tuesday evening in Washington...

The other missiles that the North fired appeared to be a mix of short-range Scud-C missiles and intermediate-range Rodong missiles, of the kind that the North has sold to Iran, Pakistan and other nations. Those missiles also landed in the Sea of Japan...

Intelligence from American satellite photographs indicated in mid-June that the North was proceeding with the test-firing of the Taepodong 2 at a launching pad on North Korea's remote east coast. Satellite photographs showed that the North Koreans had taken steps to put fuel into the missile, but the missile sat there until Wednesday morning, leading to speculation [especially on this site -- ed.] that the North was simply staging the event in order to gain attention from the United States...

But the North contradicted expert opinion by launching its long-range missile in predawn darkness today.

The surprise launch is bad news for Pyongyang, Joe Cirincione says over at Arms Control Wonk HQ.

The North Koreans have now blown it by actually testing a system that was always worth much more as a bargaining chip than as a military capability. Continued attempts to hype the threat (by either the DPRK or the Missile Defense Agency) will now be much harder to make with a straight face... [And] all those reporters and analysts who have been talking about both the North Korean missiles and the US anti-missiles as if both were proven capabilities should slap themselves in the face and snap out of it.

UPDATE 07/05/06 12:26 AM: David here. Missile defense expert Philip Coyle from the Center for Defense Information just emailed me with this:

I'm sure you noticed that the press has been confused about how many missiles North Korea actually fired. At first it was three, then four or five, then six. But the Yonhap news agency in South Korea says North Korea fired 10 missiles, not six. At the time of Tony Snow's press briefing with National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, the White House thought only three had been fired.

And at this writing Northern Command will only confirm six. So maybe our military has been confused too.

This displays one of the vulnerabilities of missile defense. If you don't see all of the missiles an enemy fires, or if they fire too many, even the most futuristic missile defenses we can imagine will be overwhelmed.

And by coordinating its missile launches with the U.S. shuttle launch, North Korea showed that any country can aspire to have the capability to conduct peaceful space launches.

David again. Just to clarify on Phil's behalf, that last comment about "peaceful space launches" was intended as sarcasm.

UPDATE 08:03 AM: The Norks just fired off another one.

UPDATE 09:12 AM: For a completely different view, check out what Stratfor has to say: "A failed launch may ultimately offer North Korea greater choices than other scenarios might have."

Had Pyongyang succeeded, even Seoul might have thought twice about continued economic contacts with the North. And had the United States or Japan shot the missile down, Pyongyang would very quickly have been forced to decide whether to consider the move an act of war and launch a counterstrike, or just complain loudly and demonstrate its own impotence. A failed test, if a test was to be carried out, provides renewed avenues for negotiation.

China will be the first to offer its services in figuring out what next for North Korea. Pyongyang will be more beholden to Beijing following the test, as North Korea tries to gauge its options and how best to play down the failure. It has lost its missile leverage now, and will need its northern neighbor even more. For its part, China will take this added leverage with the North for its own negotiations with the United States.

The failed launch may bring Washington back into the six-party talks or to the informal six-party talks Beijing recently suggested as U.S. officials breathe a collective sigh of relief at not having been forced to decide whether to try to shoot down the North Korean missile. Thus, Washington can say it was ready for the launch without having had to prove its anti-missile system in a real-life situation. And the United States also enjoys the advantage of a North Korea weakened for now by the failed test.

The question now is what happens inside Pyongyang. A failure of a major economic, political and military expenditure could quickly lead to infighting as blame is assigned and passed and next steps are debated. While North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has shown himself quite adept at managing his place in power, the loss of a key political lever is sure to create at least a brief internal political crisis. While the North may have already thought through the implications of failure, thinking and facing reality are rather different. If Pyongyang makes quick, clear steps in the coming days, it will suggest it was either well-prepared for failure or aborted the launch itself. If not, expect to see the North close in on itself, and perhaps turn to neighbor China for advice and protection.

Either way, a major shift in North Korean behavior can be expected in the coming months.

Hoax Watch, Day 10: No Nork Launch, After All

Ten days ago, the New York Times and its sister paper, the International Herald Tribune, ran a pair of breathless stories, warning us that North Korea's long-range Taepodong-2 missile was being fueled for "take off." Worse, the weapon could have the ability to "deliver chemical, biological or perhaps nuclear warheads to targets as far away as the continental United States."

Worldwide hysteria followed. Condi Rice called it a "provocative act." The Japanese prime minister said they would "respond harshly" to a launch. The Pentagon shouted that its missile defense system was ready to go. A former SecDef and a former VP called for preemptive strikes on North Korea.

But cracks in the story appeared almost immediately. No one could really say what this Taepodong-2 really looked like, or what it could do. Responsible reporters recalled North Korea's history of saber-rattling stunts -- and its anemic track record for testing missiles.

And then there was the fuel and oxidizer supposedly being loaded into the missile. Corrosive stuff, it could eat through a missile's metal casing in two or three days. Which meant that the Norks had to launch quickly, or not at all. With every day this missile "crisis" dragged on, the less likely it became.

By the beginning of this week, it became clear that a world-class hoax had gone down. Either Pyongyang had hoodwinked the globe into thinking it was about to launch -- or the Times was once again hyping up a national security threat.

Today, finally, the Times admitted the obvious. Well, kinda sorta. And on page A9 -- not the font page, where the Taepodong "scoop" had been originally published.

On Monday and Tuesday, two officials said the intelligence could, at best, be interpreted as offering only a prudent assumption that the missile was fueled, and that intelligence analysts had described an already fueled missile as a worst-case scenario.

"It is impossible to know for certain whether or how much fuel is moving between a closed container through a closed line to another closed container," one official said.

Citing intelligence gathered by "overhead systems" photographing the missile, Senator Warner said, "We are not certain if it's fueled."

(Big ups: TP)

UPDATE 07/06/06 12:11 PM: Well, so much for hoaxes! See here for coverage of the Nork's actual launch.

Perry: Strike Korea Now, Get Intel Later (Updated)

Clinton defense secretary William Perry is ready to attack North Korea, now.

Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil?... If North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.

But there's a teeny-tiny fact Perry seems to have overlooked: We have no idea, really, whether North Korea is preparing a missile. Or what that missile is capable of doing.

The hype kicked into high gear when the New York Times claimed that the Norks "completed fueling a long-range ballistic missile" over the weekend. But the report is getting fishier by the second. The Norks generally rely on a highly corrosive gasoline-kerosene mix for their missile fuel, and an oxidizer containing nitric acid. It's nasty, metal-eating stuff. And once fueled up, the missile has to be launched quickly -- two or three days, I've been told -- or else the missile is basically ruined.

It's now been four days. And there's been no launch. Which means it's becoming increasingly unlikely that a missile has been fueled. So much for Perry's demand "to strike the [missile] if North Korea refuses to drain the fuel out."

And, of course, there may not be an ICBM at all. Remember, the North Koreans have launched exactly one intermediate-range ballistic missile, in 1998. The thing -- a combination of smaller, Nodong and Scud missiles -- went about 2,000 km or so. Now, U.S. intelligence assumes the Norks have been working on strapping together more Nodongs and Scuds (or, at least, their engines) for an ICBM -- something that can reach three to five times further, and hit the U.S. But no one has actually seen the weapon. Even how many the stages the mystery missile has in unknown; some folks say two, others say three.

Plus, as the Post mentioned a few days back, Pyongyang has a long history of staging elaborate hoaxes, in order to get the world's attention.

A year ago, the world was on edge after reports that North Korea might test a nuclear weapon -- and one report even suggested the evidence showed that viewing stands had been built. No test took place.

Now, what happens if we strike North Korea -- and there's no missile to hit? What does that do to American standing, then?

UPDATE 11:47 AM: "South Korea's defense minister said Thursday that Seoul believes North Korea's missile launch is not imminent despite concern in the region that the communist nation would test-fire a long-range missile." (AP, via FP Passport)

UPDATE 5:36 PM:Even Dick Cheney -- Dick Cheney, fer chrissakes! -- is pouring cold water on the Nork missile threat. Check out this interview with CNN's John King:

KING: Do we know what's on that missile? Is it a satellite? Is it a warhead? Is it a test?

CHENEY: We don't know. That's one of the concerns, that this is a regime that's not transparent that we believe has developed nuclear weapons and now has put a missile on a launch pad without telling anybody what it's all about -- as to put a satellite in orbit, or a simple test flight. They will, obviously, generate concern on the part of their neighbors and the United States to the extent that they continue to operate this way.

As the president's made clear, this is not the kind of behavior we'd like to see, given the fact the North Koreans do have a nuclear program and have refused to come clean about it.

KING: What do we know about their capabilities? Some have said this new longer range missile could reach Guam, perhaps Alaska. Others say, no, it might be able to reach Los Angeles. And there are some who think maybe even right here, Washington, D.C. What do we know?

CHENEY: We -- this is first test of this particular Taepo Dong II missile -- we believe it does have a third stage added to it now. But again, we don't know what the payload is. I think it's also fair to say that the North Korean missile capabilities are fairly rudimentary. They've been building Scuds and so forth over the years. But their test flights in the past haven't been notably successful. But we are watching it with interest and following it very closely. (emphasis mine)

National Security Adviser Steven Hadley says the same thing, basically: "In terms of North Korean intentions, you know this is a very opaque society, and very hard to read." Then he adds this little gem about our mighty missile defense system:

"We have a missile defense system ... what we call a long-range missile defense system that is basically a research, development, training, test kind of system," Hadley said. "It does ... have some limited operational capability. And the purpose, of course, of a missile defense system is to defend .... the territory of the United States from attack."

(big ups: RC)

North Korea: Missile Hype? (Updated)

What to make of the news that North Korea's "115-foot Taepodong-2 missile stands ready to take off from Musudan-Ri, a remote village on the northeast coast of North Korea, after engineers apparently completed loading liquid fuel into its rocket boosters"?

The International Herald-Tribune says that "a successful test would provide the strongest indication yet that North Korea was developing the capacity to deliver chemical, biological or perhaps nuclear warheads to targets as far away as the continental United States." The Times notes that it "could also ignite a political chain reaction in Japan, the United States and China, which have been trying to re-engage North Korea in stalled talks about its nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration might step up financing for missile defense; Japan might increase its missile defense efforts as well, while militant Japanese politicians might push to reconsider the nation's nuclear weapons options."

Center for Defense Information missile guru Victoria Samson takes the threat seriously, too. But she cautions us not to get too caught up in the hype.

This [move to test] probably is a combination of several factors: NK trying to press the United States into sitting down in one-on-one talks, which NK would love but the United States is unwilling to concede and instead obstinately sticks to the six-party talks formula, which clearly is doing so well; NK trying its old stand-by of ratcheting up pressure in order to get concessions (it's backed off in the past after having done so); and NK wanting to test new missile engines. I think that the whole hullabaloo about this now showing that NK can strike all of the United States is just that - a hullabaloo. (emphasis mine)

Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis reminds us that this "Taepodong-2" isn't North Korea's name for its missile; it's an American designation for a system we really don't know much about. How many stages the missile has, how it gets from point A to point B -- all of that remains a mystery. So these Drudge headlines about "A MISSILE THAT CAN REACH AMERICA" are a bit on the misleading side. The Wonk pulls this quote from General Burwell B. Bell, commander of U.S. Forces Korea:

I’ve looked at this in some detail. The Taepo Dong II and III missiles, as we call them, are of the kind that, at least in theory, could produce intercontinental capability. Up through the late ‘90s, there was a fairly active program in North Korea to develop that missile technology and potentially to test it. In the years since the late ‘90s, the last six, seven years, we have seen very little activity by the North Koreans to actively continue to develop and test long-range missile systems. There’s no doubt in my mind that they have the capability to begin more technological investigation and to begin a regiment to lead to testing and potentially to lead to fielding. But there’s no evidence of it right now.

There's a bunch more imagery and analysis at GlobalSecurity.org.

UPDATE 01:38 PM: Interesting take on the situation from Stratfor:

North Korea's perspective, another missile launch may not be a bad tactic. Washington and Tokyo are both suggesting they will issue strongly worded statements, enact further economic restrictions against the North (not that there is much more they can cut off) and maybe even take Pyongyang before the U.N. Security Council, where North Korean allies Russia and China sit waiting with a veto. In fact, if history is a guide, North Korea -- rather than being ostracized by the 1998 launch over Japan -- found itself just a few years later normalizing relations with Italy, Australia, the Philippines, Britain, Belgium, The Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Germany, New Zealand and Luxembourg. And in the midst of this diplomatic offensive, Pyongyang hosted the South Korean president in the first inter-Korean summit.

There is, however, another angle to the current posturing. China has been conspicuously quiet about all the hype of an imminent North Korean missile test.... Chinese officials, particularly those in the military, see a clear renewal of U.S. attention and pressure on the Chinese military.

Beijing's silence as its neighbor is posing for satellite flybys suggests a certain sense of complicity on China's part. North Korea remains a valuable asset for China in its dealings with the United States: So long as Washington is unwilling to strike militarily at North Korea, Beijing remains the central point of contact with the North Koreans and wields the most influence in Pyongyang. A North Korean missile test, or even a stand-down from a near-test, would give Beijing additional cards to play in Washington...

Beijing can subtly remind Washington that, should the United States wish to refrain from bringing too much pressure to bear on China, it in turn can "reason" with the North Koreans. But if Washington keeps the pressure up, the message would go, there is no telling what those crazy North Koreans are capable of.

UPDATE 06/20/06 7:58 AM: "Three senior U.S. officials" told the Washington Post "that reports that North Korea appeared to have completed fueling the missile are based on incomplete intelligence."

U.S. satellites have observed liquid fuel canisters being placed near the missile, but officials said there was no confirmation that fueling took place. "We can't say anything for sure," said one top official with access to the intelligence.

Loading fuel into the rocket boosters for the Taepodong-2 missile would almost certainly suggest a launch will take place, because it is difficult to siphon out the fuel. But North Korea has a long history of doing things simply for the benefit of American satellites -- and to bring the world's attention back to the Stalinist state.

A year ago, the world was on edge after reports that North Korea might test a nuclear weapon -- and one report even suggested the evidence showed that viewing stands had been built. No test took place.

(Big ups: TP)

UPDATE 06/20/06 10:43 AM: "I have a suspicion, a fairly strong one, that whatever's on the pad at Musudan-ri is considerably smaller than the canonical TD-2 [Taepodong-2] that people have been talking about, maybe just an improved version of the 1998 TD-1," sage reader AT writes. "It would be nice to know if the US or Japan actually have imagery that shows the dimensions of the present rocket."

AT points us to this report from South Korea's Chosun Ilbo:

South Korea's National Intelligence Service says North Korea is unlikely to have injected fuel into a missile it may be about to launch, according to a member of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee. Unnamed U.S. officials claimed Sunday the North had already fueled what they allege is an inter-continental ballistic missile at a launch pad in North Hamgyeong Province.

"At the National Assembly Intelligence Committee meeting, we were told the judgment of the NIS that it is difficult to determine whether the fuel has been loaded," Chung Hyung-keun, a Grand National Party member of the committee told reporters.

"In the area of the launch platform, there are 40 fuel containers, an amount insufficient, it would seem, to provide the 15 tons of kerosene and 45 tons of oxidizing agent needed to fill the missile up."

The lawmaker said the NIS pointed out that the North had on a prior occasion set up a missile and left it for 50 days without fueling it, only to clear it off the platform later. The NIS did not specify when that incident took place.

North Korea Pledges No Nukes

Great news: "North Korea agreed to end its nuclear weapons program this morning in return for security, economic and energy benefits," the New York Times is reporting.

The United States, North Korea and four other nations participating in nuclear negotiations in Beijing signed a draft accord in which Pyongyang promised to abandon efforts to produce nuclear weapons and re-admit international inspectors to its nuclear facilities. Foreign powers said they would provide aid, diplomatic assurances and security guarantees and consider North Korea's demands for a light-water nuclear reactor...

The new agreement commits North Korea to scrap all of its existing nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities, to rejoin the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and to re-admit international nuclear inspectors. North Korea withdrew from the treaty and expelled inspectors in 2002.

The United States and North Korea also pledged to respect each other's sovereignty and right to peaceful co-existence and to work toward normalization of relations. The two countries do not have full diplomatic relations and did not sign a peace treaty after the Korean War...

"It is significant that the countries have agreed on a broad set of principles," said Koh Yu Hwan, a North Korea expert at Dong Guk University in Seoul. "But they postponed addressing the hot-potato issues to prevent the talks from collapsing."

Most pointedly, the agreement finesses the North Korean demand that proved the biggest stumbling block in the latest round of talks -- its condition that the outside world provide a light-water nuclear reactor that it says it will use to produce electricity. The issue is left essentially unresolved, potentially leaving both sides to claim that their views prevailed.

The reactor "is not the only sticking point," the L.A. Times notes.

The Bush administration wants a far more extensive nuclear dismantlement than occurred after the 1994 treaty. North Korea is expected not only to dismantle its plutonium-based weapons program at Yongbyon, the country's main nuclear facility 60 miles north of Pyongyang, but also a secretive nuclear program based on highly-enriched uranium. It was news of the existence of this program in late 2002 that caused the earlier treaty to collapse.

North Korea had denied having a highly-enriched uranium program, and some other parties to the talks, notably China and Russia, have expressed doubts about the Bush administration's evidence.

In addition, North Korea will be forced to account for and dismantle its already-completed nuclear bombs, possibly as many as 13, which are believed to be hidden underground throughout the country.

Today's agreement skirted many of these difficult issues, which are likely to raise considerable hurdles in the next round of talks scheduled for November.

THERE'S MORE: Meanwhile, "the Pentagon may be having second thoughts about proposed revisions to its nuclear weapons doctrine that would allow commanders to seek presidential approval for using atomic arms against nations or terrorists who intend to use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against the United States."

AND MORE: "The agreement punts on most of the contentious questions; buying time is a respectable diplomatic strategy -- but time favors the North Koreans (who keep stockpiling Plutonium)," says Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis, who studies Asian nuclear arsenals for a living.

I love the agreement, because my Republican buddies will have to shut their pie-holes about how the Clinton Administration blew it with North Korea. After five years of Bush, we still don't have a different plan than what the Clinton Administration did. The joint statement doesn't make any progress on the North Korean uranium enrichment program and the Bush Administration expressed it's "respect" for the DPRK's "right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy."

AND MORE: "It's a significant breakthrough. But it could easily have been accomplished two and a half years ago, had President George W. Bush been willing," argues Slate's Fred Kaplan. "It is also nothing like an actual agreement, just a preliminary step before the real negotiations — where, if history holds, North Korea will frustrate us with tricks and backtracking, and we just have to hang on tight."

North Korea's One Ton Bomb?

The Financial Times reports a North Korean defector claims "Kim Jong-il's regime has made a one-tonne nuclear bomb and is working on lighter weapons that could be fired more reliably, according to a South Korean magazine."

Is this plausible? Yeah, kinda.

I wrote a blog post about this a while back, as did my co-blogger Paul Kerr in Arms Control Today.

The unclassified testimony on North Korea and the CTBT suggests Pyongyang has "simple fission-type nuclear weapons ... validated ... without conducting yield-producing nuclear tests.”

"Simple fission-type" is a term of art that means FRICKIN' HEAVY.

Not heavy like Liz Taylor, but heavy like the Nagaski device (left, with a friend), which weighed 9,000 lbs. In practice, "simple fission-type" means too heavy for a long-range ballistic missile, although the emminent John Holdren allowed that a new nuclear state might produce an unreliable warhead that needs testing in the 1,000–2,000 pound range.

Rowan Scarborough (of the Washington Times) reported on a classified DIA report that estimated the NORKs couldn't do better than 650-750 kg (1,400-1,700 lbs).

So, one ton is at the edge of plausible, but my guess is they aren't that good.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis.