The
Mystery Threat the US Navy Fears: North Korean Cruise Missiles
In 2013, the U.S. Navy’s Pacific
Fleet hinted at a mysterious and “newly discovered threat” to American
warships. Whatever it was, it was serious — and had America’s admirals spooked.
We knew the threat was probably a
missile, because the Navy’s only mention of it was inside a contracting request
for a new electronics countermeasures system designed for surface ships.
The Navy awarded a $65-million
contract to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to develop the system within a
“critically short” time frame.
Military & Aerospace Electronics, which first noticed the request, suggested that the threat was a radar-guided anti-ship
missile from a country or terrorist group in the Middle East. We suggested a
Chinese anti-ship missile.
It’s neither. The threat is most
likely from a country the United States is still technically at war
with — North Korea.
More precisely, the threat is
probably a North Korean Kh-35 anti-ship cruise missile.
The Navy’s hurried development of a
missile-defense system, begun just a year before the existence of the new North
Korean cruise missile became public in the West, is a window into how the
Pentagon is keeping tabs on the reclusive, hostile country — and how the U.S.
responds to new dangers.
It’s also a window into the world of
open source intelligence, where ordinary people dig through publicly available
information for nuggets of information governments don’t necessarily
want them to know.
The Pentagon didn’t specify the
exact nature of its new countermeasures system — officially designated
AN/SLQ-59. But most likely, the device can jam the radars of anti-ship
missiles. Almost every modern anti-ship missile has a small radar that guides
the weapon and helps detect targets.
If you want to prevent an incoming
missile from sinking your ship, the best way is to overwhelm it with
electromagnetic interference. It’s easier than shooting it down.
The Naval Research Laboratory and
defense contractor ITT Excelis had developed a prototype of the electronic
warfare system in 2012, and wanted help from industry to field the first system
by 2014. The Pacific Fleet needed up to 24 of the systems.
So why does this have anything to do
with a North Korean missile? Well, there are several reasons why.
The Kh-35 first attracted attention
outside of Western military and intelligence circles in June 2014, when arms
control expert Jeffrey Lewis noticed something unusual in
a North Korean propaganda video.
North Korean videos typically
feature action-packed montages at their very end, sometimes with tantalizingly
brief clues showing off new weapons and capabilities.
In the North Korean video here— shortly after the 49-minute
mark — there is a brief, one-second clip of a surface ship firing a cruise
missile.
But as far as the West knew when the
video debuted, North Korea didn’t have any cruise missiles. Only a handful
of countries make cruise missiles, and even fewer would sell them to North
Korea.
The missile in the video resembles
an anti-ship missile, similar to the American Harpoon and French
Exocet. The missile’s canister launcher is visible, and although it resembles
the launcher of the Russian Kh-35 anti-ship missile, it isn’t a perfect match.
A number of people — myself
included — volunteered to comb the Internet for clues. A search of anti-ship
missile launches on YouTube made it clear it wasn’t a Western design. It wasn’t
Chinese, either.
Plus, the footage was unique.
North Korea didn’t steal some other video of a missile and fence it off as its
own. Pyongyang may bluster and make threats, but it doesn’t bluff regarding
capabilities.
The missile was indeed a Kh-35. Made
by Russian defense contractor Zvezda, the Kh-35 flies at Mach 0.8 at just 10 to
15 meters above the ocean surface. It has a range of 70 miles.
It packs a 320 pound shaped-charge
warhead, making it extremely dangerous to destroyer-sized ships. [Here is a
wiki link to the Kh-35: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-35]
Now recall that the Navy’s request
for a countermeasures system came from the Pacific Fleet, meaning the threat
was a country in the Asia-Pacific region. The only countries even potentially
hostile to the U.S. in that region are China and North Korea.
The U.S. and China are nowhere near
coming to blows — ruling out China as the source of an “urgent need.”
North Korea, on the other hand, has
attacked American and South Korean ships before, including the 1968 seizure of
the spy ship USS Pueblo and the 2010 sinking of the South Korean
corvette ROKS Cheonan.
Spontaneous acts of violence are
part of North Korea’s foreign policy. Defending ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
from the Kh-35 would be an urgent priority indeed.
Exactly how and why North Korea got
the Kh-35 is a good question. North Korea and Russia have become increasingly
close during the Kim Jong Un era, and Pyongyang could have bought the missiles
from Moscow.
Another possibility is Myanmar,
which has openly purchased the Kh-35 from Russia, and has bought weapons from
Pyongyang. North Korean technical advisers have assisted Myanmar’s ballistic
missile program — and may have assisted its nuclear weapons program.
It’s possible that Pyongyang
received anti-ship missiles in return for weapons … or nuclear know-how.
The Kh-35 missile connection isn’t
definitive. Nobody knows for sure how North Korea got its missiles, and it’s
even possible — albeit remotely — that they might be a totally new design.
With North Korea, it’s hard to rule
out anything. But the announcement of the threat, clues about the
threat and the sudden appearance of the Kh-35 is an awfully big
coincidence.
We’ll probably never know how U.S.
intelligence found out about North Korea’s Kh-35. Still, thanks to open source
analysis, we civilians have a pretty good idea they’re there — and where they
might have come from.
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