TOKYO — Analysts who studied photos of a half-dozen ominous new North Korean missiles showcased recently at a lavish military parade say they were fakes, and not very convincing ones, casting further doubt on the country’s claims of military prowess.
Since a recent rocket-launch failure, Pyongyang’s top military leaders have made several boastful statements about the nation’s weapons capabilities. On Wednesday, Vice Marshal Ri Yong-Ho claimed his country is capable of defeating the United States “at a single blow.” And on Monday, North Korea promised “special actions” that would reduce Seoul’s government to ashes within minutes.
But the weapons displayed April 15 appear to be a mishmash of liquid-fuel and solid-fuel components that could never fly together. Undulating casings on the missiles suggest the metal is too thin to withstand flight. Each missile was slightly different from the others, even though all were supposedly the same type. They don’t even fit the mobile launchers on which they were loaded.
“There is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups,” Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker of Germany’s Schmucker Technologie wrote in a paper posted recently on the website that listed those discrepancies. “It remains unknown if they were designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers simply did some sloppy work.”
