They Actually Did It - By Jeffrey Lewis

In retrospect, we should have known North Korea might finally succeed (mostly) in launching a satellite into space. Last week, the state-run Korean Central News Agency announced North Korea was extending the launch window after engineers found a "technical deficiency in the first-stage control engine module."

This was such a normal, grown-up explanation that we might have inferred a sudden bout of competence. (I kind of pine for the old days, where they would have pressed ahead, drunk on juche, sending another flaming ball of wreckage into the sea.)

The success, more or less, of the Unha-3 launch raises important questions. Does North Korea have a functioning ICBM now? Is this an Iranian ICBM? Are we all going to die?

Maybe, I don't know, and yes -- but not today.

First, this is a lot like an ICBM, even if it is not quite precisely the same thing.

You have undoubtedly read that a three-stage Taepodong-2, which is what we call the Unha-3, could rain death and destruction as far as 15,000 kilometers away. That is an U.S. intelligence community judgment assuming a slightly modified missile with a 500-kilogram payload. North Korea's plutonium-based nuclear weapons are probably a bit larger than that, and in any event the payload must also accommodate a few hundred kilograms of shielding. (Reentering through the atmosphere is very hot.) A 1,000-kilogram payload would reduce the range of a three-stage Taepodong.

David Wright and Ted Postol, both physicists, estimated that, if the Unha is structurally sound enough to handle 1,000 kilograms of payload, the missile could travel about 10,000 kilometers -- far enough to reach about half of the lower 48 states. David wrote me the other night to say that they've concluded that is a bit of an overestimate and that I'd be safer to say 8,000-10,000 kilometers. The North Koreans, in any case, have repeatedly said they have missiles that can reach the United States.

Still, the Unha is not an ideal ICBM. In addition to issues with warhead mass reducing range and compromising the structure, there is the issue of fueling the missile. The several-day period during which North Korea erected and fueled the missile has evident drawbacks from a military operations perspective. (Although the quick replacement is worth noting. Perhaps there was a second airframe on site.) North Korea could attempt to deploy the missile in silos or perhaps go the Chinese route of storing the missiles in mountains, rolling them out to launch. They haven't done that yet.

What North Korea has done is to parade a much better idea though Kim Il Sung Square this spring. If I had to guess, North Korea's ICBM will be a three-stage mobile missile with storable propellant that looks very much like the probable mockups we saw trundling down the avenue. Although some of my colleagues are not convinced this is a plausible path forward, I'll take the North Koreans at their (belligerent) word until I have some compelling reason to think otherwise.

The real value in any Taepodong-2 is what it teaches the North Koreans about staging -- the tricky task of stacking one rocket on top of another -- and the other niceties of building long-range missiles. These are useful skills that have been in short supply for the North Koreans as of late.

Second, we've heard a lot about the presence of Iranians at the test.

There are many reports of Iranian observers at prior launches -- in 2006, 2009, and this spring -- but it's always been hard to tell whether they've been technicians or just VIPs in town for the bulgogi. Prior to this launch, U.S. and South Korean news outlets reported that the Iranians had permanently stationed a delegation from Shahid Hemmat Industries, maker of the Shahab-3 and Ghadr missiles, in North Korea.

The relationship between Pyongyang and Tehran is an interesting one. Iran started out as a customer, like Pakistan, eventually purchasing Nodong missiles from the North Koreans. (AQ Khan reportedly made his early contacts through Pakistanis working with North Koreans in Iran, during the Iran-Iraq War.) But while Pakistan contented itself with a copy of the Nodong called the Ghauri, Iran made the missile its own, substantially redesigning it to create the Shahab-3.