Bharat Rakshak

The U.S. recovered the front section of the rocket used in North Korea’s satellite launch in December, which gave away the status of the regime's nuclear arms program.

North Korea: One TV news report said North Korea issued another threat today against the US for the continuation of joint training with Republic of Korea forces. NightWatch was unable to find that text. However, North Korea said in a past statement that it would be on alert as long as the US-ROK exercises lasted. They are scheduled to end on 30 April - two more weeks.


The Rear. The party daily Rodong Sinmun carried articles on 17 April about a soccer match between North Korea and Mongolia, the first camping session of the year for children and various cultural and construction projects.


Special comment on North Korean missiles and warheads: The press coverage of North Korea's missiles and warheads is a mélange of accurate and confusing, reassuring and vigilance-raising articles. The purpose of this special comment is to report for Readers a few facts as NightWatch has learned them in the past 40 years.

Missiles. North Korea can make ballistic missiles. The names and capabilities of North Korean ballistic missiles are readily available on the internet.

Its ballistic missiles work. Syria, Pakistan and Iran all have fired North Korean-made missiles and indigenously- made missiles manufactured in turnkey production facilities purchased from and built by North Korea.

Syrian Scud ballistic missiles occasionally fired at the anti-government opposition were made at a North Korean-built Scud facility. Pakistani Ghauri missiles are a variant of the North Korean Nodong missile. They are tested periodically for system reliability by firing them into Baluchistan. They are a key part of Pakistan's strategic forces for attacking India.

Iran launched more than 170 Scuds - Shahab I 's -- against Iraq during the War of the Cities in 1985. The first hundred or so were bought from North Korea. North Korea also built a Scud manufacturing facility for Iran.

North Korea also sold Iran Nodong's which were renamed Shahab IIIs. Iran can make Shahab IIIs. Iran's missile test facility was built by North Korea. Iran also bought 18 or 19 BM-25/Musudan missiles with launchers from North Korea in 2005, according to a variety of blog sites that track missile proliferation.


Warheads. North Korea can make high explosive, fragmentation and a variety of other non-nuclear warheads for all of its missiles. As noted above, some have been and are being used in combat. They work.

Can North Korea make a nuclear warhead? This question contains sub-questions about physics and about machine engineering. The machine engineering issue should not be the subject of much debate. North Korea is a country of miners and it makes tools. It has large machine-tool plants, a large steel making industry and makes and maintains modern mining equipment.


Some Readers might reply accurately that some of the North's weapons don't hold up in repeated use. Weapons made under the pressures of socialist production schedules tend to be slip shod in order to meet quota assignments. The missiles and mining equipment are not in the same category as some of the self-propelled guns, for example.

North Koreans scientists and technicians have had the opportunity and fissile material to work on machining plutonium since at least 1993. If Pakistan can machine fissile material to make a warhead then the North Koreans, inferentially, can because North Koreans worked at Khan Labs for years after the 1998 Pakistani nuclear test to develop warheads for the Ghauri missile, also made by Khan Labs.

As to the nuclear and flight physics of a nuclear warhead, especially miniaturization, the evidence is indirect.

On the website 38 North, David Albright made an excellent argument for North Korea having at least the capability to fit a plutonium warhead on a Nodong: the North has been working at it with outside help for so long. The outside help has come from Russian contract scientists; Pakistan's A.Q. Khan and, Albright says, from China when Kim Il-sung was alive.

None of the above proves that North Korea has a nuclear warhead, but it proves the existence of an expansive network of cooperating missile and nuclear physics experts across continents and active for many years. It includes North Korea.

Several technical blogs contain excellent explanations about how the technology transfer would occur, especially for the Musudan missile, which required help from Russian scientists hired by North Korea. The trial testimony of A.Q. Khan establishes the fact of a two-way technology transfer for the Ghauri missile and for processing fissile material.

The North Korean development path. One comment this week accurately noted that North Korea has not demonstrated a fully tested nuclear weapon. That also may be said of many of the weapons it makes. North Korea follows a high risk, development path different from Russia or the US.

It performs fewer tests than the pioneering nuclear states performed. That should surprise no one because so has Pakistan and India. It is not reassuring. Secondly, technology is shared among the members of the nuclear technology network, as the testimony at trial of A.Q. Khan proved.

Again, none of that is direct evidence of a nuclear warhead. It is not proof. However, it is probative indirect evidence and it establishes the threat as a moderate probability-high risk threat, if only because one member of the technology exchange network has the capability North Korean claims it has.

That quality and quantity of evidence support the prudent precautions that the Allies have taken and must sustain for the next two weeks. Defense against and management of low probability-high risk threats should be familiar tasks because they were at the center of US defense policy and strategic thinking after the Soviets got the bomb.

China: The government published a defense white paper that describes Chinese judgments about the international environment. It amplifies the defense themes that President Xi addressed in his speech to the People's Liberation Army delegates at the National People's Congress, particularly the "new situation."


Section one describes the new situation, new challenges and new missions. In the middle of the second full paragraph, the paper states," Some country has strengthened its Asia-Pacific military alliances, expanded its military presence in the region, and frequently makes the situation there tenser."

Comment: NightWatch intends to publish a more detailed examination of the white paper, but the quoted sentence, about the US pivot to Asia, has received extensive press coverage.

Some Chinese analysts might claim, as some press outlets already allege, that this is only the view of the Ministry of Defense. That is accurate, but it precisely follows President Xi's guidance to the PLA delegates. It also provides a different, non-cooperative explanation and context for Chinese reactions to the Korean confrontation.

The Ministry of Defense sees the US as exploiting the confrontation to justify its defense build-up in Asia which is encouraging bad behavior by China's neighbors. Japan is cited "for making trouble" over the Diaoyu/Senkakus Islands. The paper at this point conveys defensiveness and suspicion of US intentions. More later.

shyamd wrote:PRC/NoKo relations are not very good. PRC Intel authorised leaks of 5th & 6th planned nuke tests. Also they will launch a new long range missile. These leaks are attempts to pressure the new No Ko ruler.

China has criticized a Japanese plan to install a cutting-edge U.S. missile defense radar system. China's Foreign Ministry says it could harm regional stability and upset the strategic balance.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said, "Some countries or blocs in the region, under the pretext of a DPRK nuclear threat, have unilaterally set up anti-missile systems or are conducting bloc cooperation.

"This is not conducive to nuclear non-proliferation and stability in the region, and will have an extremely negative impact on the global strategic balance."

The governor of Kyoto endorsed the radar plan last week. The X-band radar system would based in the Kyoto region, and would boost Japan’s ability to track and intercept missiles from across the Sea of Japan.

In February, Japan and the U.S. government announced plans to deploy the radar system within the year.

The X-band radar system has a range of up to 4,000 kilometers. It can trace launched missiles and lock the route so that the missiles can be intercepted.

(Reuters) - South Korea showed off on Tuesday new missiles designed to target North Korea's artillery and long-range missiles and vowed to boost deterrence against its unpredictable neighbor.

The ballistic Hyeonmu-2, with a range of 300 km (190 miles), and the Hyeonmu-3, a cruise missile with a range of more than 1,000 km (620 miles) were put on public display for the first time in a rare South Korean military parade.

Both of the indigenously developed missiles have been deployed. They were unveiled in February after the North conducted its third nuclear test in defiance of international warnings, two months after it successfully launched a long-range rocket and put an object into space.

"We must build a strong anti-North deterrence until the day the North drops its nuclear arms and makes the right choice for its people and for peace on the Korean peninsula," South Korean President Park Geun-hye said at the parade marking the founding of the South's armed forces 65 years ago.

Visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel watched the parade from a podium at a military airfield south of the capital, Seoul.

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South Korea reached a deal last year with the United States to extend the range of its missiles to better counter the threat from the North, securing the right to develop ballistic missiles with a range of up to 800 km (500 miles).

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s main nuclear complex was discharging hot wastewater in a further sign that the country has restarted a Soviet-era nuclear reactor there that it had used to obtain plutonium fuel for atomic bombs, an American research institute said on Thursday.