North Korea is deploying a new missile which may be able to strike the US mainland with a nuclear warhead, a report in Jane's Defence Weekly says yesterday.
In the most alarming and detailed picture yet painted of Pyongyang's deterrent force, the authoritative military publication said the navy had customized a dozen scrapped Russian submarines to launch ballistic weapons of mass destruction.
Rumors have been circulating for several years that North Korea is developing an intercontinental missile -- the Taepodong 2 -- but the latest report suggests that the country's leader, Kim Jong-il, may also have ordered his military to attempt a short cut.
If confirmed, North Korea would join an exclusive club capable of covertly launching atomic weapons from submarines. Only the five permanent members of the UN security council -- the US, UK, France, China and Russia -- and possibly Israel possess such a strategic advantage.
The article, which appears in this week's edition of Jane's, says North Korea's new systems appeared to be based on a decommissioned Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile, the R-27.
It notes that several Russian missile experts from Chelyabinsk, a city in the Urals, were blocked in an attempt to enter North Korea in 1992, but others succeeded in subsequent years.
Much of the technology was reportedly transferred in the form of scrap in 1993, when a Japanese trading firm sold 12 decommissioned Foxtrot and Golf II class submarines to North Korea. Although many key mechanisms were removed, the magazine said the vessels still contained launch tubes and stabilising sub-systems. By customizing these devices, it said, North Korea had developed and deployed a land-based missile with a range of 2,500km to 4,000km, as well as a sea-based missile with a range of 2,500km.
The version of the missile capable of being launched from submarines or ships "is potentially the most threatening," Jane's said. "It could finally provide its leadership with something that it has long sought to obtain -- the ability to directly threaten the continental US."
North Korea's nuclear and missile programs have long been a concern to the world.
Although the country has never successfully tested a nuclear weapon, it is thought to have reprocessed sufficient plutonium for one to eight warheads.
According to the South Korean military, North Korea has 600 Scud missiles with a range of 600km and 100 Nodong missiles with a range of 1,300km. It also test-fired a multi-stage Taepodong 1 rocket over Japan in 1998.
A second-generation Taepodong capable of hitting Hawaii, Alaska and possibly the western seaboard of the US is under development.
Although the CIA believes that North Korea possesses an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, Jane's news editor, Ian Kemp, said there was no doubt that the new missiles were primarily designed to carry nuclear warheads.
But Japanese military analysts are sceptical that North Korea possesses the miniaturization technology to fit a nuclear warhead into a missile.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS