NHK video casts doubt on North Korean ICBM's re-entry capabilities

Aug 01, 2017 | News On Japan

Aug 01, 2017 (Japan Times) - Video captured Friday of North Korea's latest test of a powerful long-range missile appears to show that the nuclear-armed country has yet to master technology critical to any warhead's survival when re-entering Earth's atmosphere, a new report has found.

The report, released Tuesday by the North Korean-watching website 38 North, run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, analyzed video taken by public broadcaster NHK's Muroran, Hokkaido, affiliate after the country conducted the second test-firing of its Hwasong-14 ICBM in less than a month late Friday.

Experts have said missile flew higher and longer than the first and now puts a large chunk of the United States - including Chicago and Los Angeles - within range of Pyongyang's ever-improving weapons systems.

In the NHK recording, the camera looks across a bay in the direction where the missile's re-entry vehicle (RV), which shields a nuclear warhead from the rigors of returning to Earth at ICBM velocities, crashed into the sea, about 200 km off the coast of Japan. Seconds into the video, the apparent re-entry vehicle slows and becomes so hot due to the dense air that it begins to glow as its descent is recorded by the camera.

Then, at about an altitude of 6 to 8 km, the re-entry vehicle hits what the report terms "peak radiance - when the clouds reflect the RVs radiance resulting in a bright flash."

"Soon after the flash, the RV descends to roughly 4 or 5 km altitude, where the frictional forces that slow and heat the RV reach a maximum," missile expert Michael Elleman wrote in the report.

"At this point, the RV appears to be shedding small radiant objects and is trailed by an incandescent vapor," he added. "At an altitude of 3 to 4 km, the RV then dims and quickly disappears" before passing behind a mountain range that obscured the camera's view."

Elleman said it "probably broke into small pieces."

This indicated "that it disintegrated about the time it experienced maximum stressing loads," Elleman wrote. "Had the RV survived the rigors of re-entry, it would have continued to glow until disappearing behind the mountains."

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