The missile dubbed Hwasong-15 had never been seen publicly until its successful maiden test on Nov. 28, when it flew 2,780 miles above the Earth on a nearly vertical trajectory before splashing into the Sea of Japan,
The missile dubbed Hwasong-15 had never been seen publicly until its successful maiden test on Nov. 28, when it flew 2,780 miles above the Earth on a nearly vertical trajectory before splashing into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea. The 75-foot-tall colossus was one of two intercontinental ballistic missiles to appear abruptly on North Korean launchpads last year, and the first with sufficient range to strike cities across the continental United States.
Intelligence agencies have long believed that North Korea incorporated Soviet designs into many of its missiles, including a submarine-launched ballistic missile successfully tested in 2016. But experts have been mystified over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s rapid gains in long-range-missile technology, including back-to-back successful tests of two different ICBMs last year. After the Nov. 28 launch, Kim boasted that he had realized “the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force.”
The new report builds an elaborate, if partly circumstantial, case linking North Korea’s newest missile to Soviet designs dating as far back as the mid-1960s. The evidence includes striking similarities between the Hwasong-15 and a family of Soviet-era missiles, including one that was developed by Russian engineers but abandoned before production began, according to the report prepared for Jane’s Intelligence Review, a British-based journal that focuses on international security threats. A draft of the report was provided to The Washington Post.
“It is highly likely that North Korea made use of external knowledge, technology, or hardware, in the development of the Hwasong-15 ICBM,” states the report, written by Markus Schiller, a Munich-based space technology analyst, and Nick Hansen, an imagery specialist with a 47-year career with U.S. intelligence community.
Based on new computer modeling and enhanced images of the North Korean missile, the researchers concluded that the foreign support “was derived from the Soviet-era ballistic missile program,” though it is unclear exactly when or how the transfer of information or hardware took place, the report says.
The researchers found, for example, that the North Korean missile’s size and shape echo those of the UR-100, a two-stage, solid-fuel missile built by the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, with a few differences. Its engine has the same distinctive dual-nozzle configuration as the Soviet-made RD-250 missile engine first built in 1965, and appears to use the same potent fuel mixture — a high-energy liquid propellant that only recently came into use in North Korea.
The similarities appear to implicate the former Soviet Union as the original source of the technology, and not China or Iran, as some analysts have speculated, the researchers said.
“By any dimension, this looks Soviet to me, not Chinese,” Schiller said in an interview via Skype.
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