Iran Looks Korean

Satellite, and ground, photos of Iran's new missile launching site demonstrates amazing similarity to North Korean facilities. Both Iran and North Korea deny that they cooperate in missile technology. But decades of North Korean missile technology, and North Koreans, showing up in Iran have made it pretty obvious what is going on. Iran, due to lack of experience, and embargos keeping everyone else away, was forced to go to North Korea for advanced missile technology. Thus the long range (about 4,000 kilometers) Taepo Dong 2 missile that is currently built in North Korea, has a price tag on it. Iran is willing to pay well for missile technology, because North Korea also offers missiles for sale.
Iran manufactures a 1,300 kilometer range missile, the Shehab-3, as well as several others with shorter ranges. Iran has offered them for sale, but has found few prospective buyers. North Korea already has the outlaw missile market cornered. Iran has been under an arms embargo (for most major weapons exporters) since the Islamic revolution of 1979. China and North Korea have broken the embargo, but quietly.
North Korea has taken the basic Russian SCUD missile (which was developed, with the help of captured German scientists, from the German World War II V-2 ballistic missile) and improved it as the longer range (1,300 kilometers) Nodong missile. The basic SCUD design was also enhanced to produce longer range (up to 600 kilometers) SCUDs. All of these have been sold to foreign buyers like Yemen, Iran and Pakistan.

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North Korea Updates A Cold War Classic:RSM-25

Japanese intelligence believes that North Korea is close to putting into service their new RSM-25 (or Musudan) ballistic missile. It was only last year that a military parade in North Korea featured the first public appearance of the long rumored RSM-25 missile. This is a variant of the Russian SS-N-6 submarine launched missile. The North Korean version is believed to weigh 20 tons and have a range of over 3,000 kilometers. The Japanese believe the range of the North Korean missile may be as much as 4,000 kilometers. It is believed that the North Korean version, using solid fuel rockets, was tested successfully two years ago.

The SS-N-6 is a 1960s vintage ballistic missile, and is known in Russia as the R-27. SS-N-6 is a NATO code name for the R-27. This was Russia's first true submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM), and sixteen of them were carried in Yankee class SSBNs (missile carrying nuclear submarines.) The 12 ton R-27 had a range of 2,800 kilometers and used storable liquid fuel. This means it can be ready for launch in less than half an hour.
After the R-27 was replaced by more modern missiles in the 1970s, the missile continued to be used for scientific research until 1990. By that time, 492 R-27s had been launched, 87 percent of them successfully.
It would be very embarrassing for the Russians if someone had illegally exported SS-N-6/R-27 missiles to North Korea. It is more likely, and was been reported a few years ago, that the Russian organization that designed the R-27   illegally sold the plans to North Korea. This was supposed to have happened sometime in the 1990s, and the main reason for the deal was so that North Korea could obtain the R-27 missile guidance technology. The Russians kept improving the guidance system of the R-27 through the 1980s, while the North Koreans were desperate for missile guidance technology. But it appears that the North Koreans built at least one R-27, and may have incorporated R-27 technology in some of their other long range ballistic missiles. The North Koreans were apparently pleased with the R-27 design, and spent the time and effort to change it so that Musudan used more reliable solid fuel rocket motors, than the original liquid fuel ones.

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Reasons For North Korean Nuclear Program

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According to a recent study if North Korea decides to test its Nuclear weapons the third time there is nothing much the US or other western power can do to stop them. Just like in 2006 and 2009 the event will go unpunished.

Some say that Nuclear weapons are a bargaining chip for the impoverished nation to barter more rice and oil but that is a very simplistic explanation. The reasons go much deeper than that.

To begin with the North Korean regime actually is not a communist regime at all, it is the heir to the Korean Royal line. It is like a dynasty and thus to guard its dynastic heritage nuclear weapons play apart.

Secondly after the fall of the soviet empire and the opening up of Chinese economy leading to a better and friendly relation with the South, North Korea was afraid that it will loose its protection umbrella and thus open to an invasion by the west. In this scenario there was no other alternative for this country other than to develop Nuclear weapons to keep the Americans at bay.

To some extent this has proved quite a dependable strategy and now North Korea is moving ahead in trying to miniaturize the warhead to increase the range of their already substantial cache of missiles. Which incidentally they have sold all over the world in return for rice and other food items. The biggest importer of Korean made missile has been Pakistan and Pakistan has paid the cost by supplying huge amount of Rice.

Unfortunately the solution suggested by the report is knave because it emphasizes that we must put more sanctions and squeeze the North further and accepts that there is no way to stop them but some harsh sanctions might slow them down. Basically the report says wait and watch until North Korea is strong enough to launch an attack on South Korea.I don't think it is the wisest move, instead covert methods must be used to depose the ruling dynasty of Kim from North Korea and free them of this slavery.

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N. Korea Vows to Use Nuclear Weapons If Attacked

HAVANA - North Korea's ambassador to Cuba said Aug. 28 that, if attacked, his country would respond with nuclear weapons and engage in a "sacred war," Cuban state media reported.

Kwon Sung Chol, quoted by the Prensa Latina government agency, spoke at an event late Aug. 27 marking 50 years of diplomatic relations between Cuba and North Korea.



If North Korea is attacked by U.S. and South Korean forces, "we will respond with a sacred war based on the strength of our nuclear deterrent forces," Kwon said.
"Our government will make an effort towards the denuclearization of the peninsula and the establishment of a system of lasting peace based on the principle of the reunification of both Koreas," Kwon said, according to Prensa Latina.
North Korea on July 24 threatened a "powerful nuclear deterrence" in response to joint U.S.-South Korean naval exercises then taking place.
North Korea was prepared for a "retaliatory sacred war," North Korea's National Defense Commission (NDC) said in a statement carried then by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

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