N. Korea Has New Missile Facility

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 11, 2008
One analyst said the North may seek the ability to fire nuclear weapons at the U.S.
By Pamela Hess, Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- North Korea has quietly built a long-range missile base that is larger and more capable than an older and well-known launchpad for intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to independent analysts using new satellite images of the site and other data.
Construction of the site on North Korea's west coast began at least eight years ago, according to Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., senior analyst with Jane's Information Group, and Tim Brown of Talent-keyhole.com, a private satellite-imagery analysis company. Bermudez first located the site in early spring, and the two have tracked its construction using commercial and unclassified satellite imagery.
"The primary purpose of the facility is to test," Bermudez said in an interview last week. A base capable of a long-range test could be used in wartime to launch a missile that carried a warhead.
"This is a clear indication North Korea is continuing its ballistic-missile-development program," Bermudez said.
Bermudez said the launchpad had been operational since 2005 but had not yet been used. He believes North Korea wants to use it to develop longer-range and more accurate ICBMs. It also could launch satellites into space.
A major step
Although North Korea has long been thought to want additional missile capability and test facilities, this is the first public disclosure of the new launch facility, according to Bermudez, Brown, and John Pike, an imagery analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, who first reviewed the information last week.
Pike said the new facility represented a major step forward for North Korea's long-range missile program as it would allow multiple test flights in a short time. That would be difficult at the smaller, original long-range missile launch site known as Musudan-ni.
"This would be a facility to conduct a real flight-test program and develop something that you have some operational confidence in," Pike told the Associated Press. "It would suggest they have the intention to develop the capability to perfect a missile to deliver atomic bombs to the United States."
"At the old facility, [a robust test program] just wasn't going to happen," he said.
'No reason'
Pike and Brown identified Musudan-ni nine years ago when they were with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.
A U.S. counterproliferation official said U.S. intelligence had been aware of the North Korean site for several years. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
North Korea has not used the new site but could at any time, U.S. intelligence officials and the outside analysts said. "There is no reason they couldn't launch in the near future," Brown said.
Construction has continued even as the U.S. government has renewed its attempt to persuade North Korea to shut nuclear-weapons program.
Those negotiations do not address North Korea's long-range missile program but would give North Korea much-desired economic and political incentives in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons.
The deal's future may be in doubt with news this week that Kim Jong Il, who has exercised absolute rule in the impoverished, isolated Stalinist country, may have been incapacitated. North Korean authorities deny he is ailing.
 
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