News relating to missiles used or about to be used in Ukraine and about “Russian” ICBMs in North Korea

It is widely expected that in the coming week American president Joe Biden will announce the decision to ship American medium range missiles ATACMS to Ukraine. Discussions of this subject have been widespread in both US and European media. The focus has been on the range of missiles and whether their delivery will enable Ukraine to attack across the border into the Russian Federation itself for the purpose of destroying supplies and command centers there.  Of course, the issue is complicated by what is meant by RF territory. In the language of the West, all of the Ukrainian territory which has been captured by Russia since 2014 is considered to be fair game for military attack.  From the perspective of Russia, any attacks on Crimea, in particular, may be justification for major escalation of the war into a direct fight with the NATO country or countries supplying the given missiles. That said, there is reason to believe that Storm Shadows were used to hit Sevastopol on 13 September, without any sign yet of Russia’s intention to escalate.

The advocates of shipping ATACMSs to Ukraine point out that its range, 190 miles or 300 km, is no greater than that of the Storm Shadow missiles which Britain and France have sent to Ukraine without prompting escalatory actions by Russia. However, that is to overlook the other side of the issue, namely the method of launch.  Storm Shadow is an air to ground missile.  It is launched from Soviet-era Ukrainian jet fighters which have been especially modified for this purpose.  Since the Storm Shadow is devilishly difficult for any air defense system to destroy in flight, the Russians have focused attention on destroying Ukrainian planes that are part of the launch operation. Just this past week, on 11 September a Russian missile attack on the Dolgintsevo air base near Krivoy Rog in the Dnepropetrovsk region of Ukraine destroyed 5 Ukrainian fighters, two MiG-29s and three SU-25s.  The MiGs are said to either carry the Storm Shadow or to provide cover for SU-24s which carry them.

The logic of supplying ATCSMs is precisely in the launch mode, not the attack radius of these missiles. They are ground to ground missiles which are launched from mobile platforms similar in principle to the multiple rocket launchers HIMARS.  In that sense, they are more difficult to find and destroy than a jet fighter.

In the meantime, in Europe, German Chancellor Scholz has made it plain that he will not approve sending Germany’s long range missiles, the TAURUS, to Kiev until the United States makes a first move by shipping its own missiles.  The TAURUS falls into the same launch category as the Storm Shadow; it is sent on its way to target by a jet fighter. Its distinction is only one of distance, at 500 km range.  If Ukraine has a fast diminishing or fully destroyed air force, the TAURUS will not be of much use.

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Otherwise, over this past week, the interest of major Western media in missiles has focused on what North Korea owns and how it got them.  The interest came about as journalists followed the course of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s tour of the Russian Far East.

It has occurred to our journalists that North Korea presently possesses ICBMs capable of reaching the North American heartland, and as they pored over the technical characteristics of these missiles they noted that one seems to be very close in design to Soviet era missiles that were once the mainstay of the Russian strategic arsenal. I am speaking of the Korean rebranded Topol-M.

It is not surprising, therefore, that some folks in the States are wondering how is it that the Russians were able to get away with supplying the designs of the Topol-M to Pongyang without the United States raising a hullaballoo. 

The answer, my friends, is in the inconvenient fact that those responsible for providing North Korea with  production plans and technology for manufacturing the Topol-M were not Russians; they were Ukrainians. This story is discussed in an article on a Russian news portal a couple of days ago. See https://life.ru/p/1349991   According to the authors, the Ukrainians sold to the North Koreans part of the technology but not all. For example, they held back the secrets of the solid fuel used in this missile, which the Koreans had to develop on their own. Moreover, for the guidance system, the Koreans were assisted or copied a system developed by the Chinese. What this tells us is that if the Koreans should agree with the Kremlin on the purchase of one or another missile-related technology, its integration into their own production will be done by the Koreans themselves. The same may be said of technologies for construction and operation of nuclear powered submarines which the North Koreans are said to be looking for abroad.

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Before closing, I use this opportunity to sum up the Russian visit of Comrade Kim after he spent that first day in talks with Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome about which I wrote earlier in the week.  His next stop was Komsomolsk on Amur, where he was shown the Yuri Gagarin factory complex producing Russian military and civilian aircraft, including the “Alligator” multifunctional attack helicopters that have been so effective in the  Ukraine war against tanks, armored personnel carriers and other military hardware. The top Russian official with Kim for the day was Minister of Trade and Industry Denis Manturov.

From Komsomolsk, Kim went next to the Knevichi air base in the Amur region, where he was shown the massive turboprop Tupolev Tu-95  and the sleek Tu-160 “White Swan,” both mainstays of the nuclear triad as bombers and missile platforms. Considerable attention was given to an assortment of the most modern fighter jets in the Su family, as well as to MiGs equipped with the hypersonic Kinzhal missile. The Russian hosts were headed by Minister of Defense Shoigu.

Kim’s tour ended in Vladivostok where he was taken aboard the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov of the Pacific fleet, which is typical of the latest Russian vessels in having an important complement of hypersonic missiles with 1500 km range as well as weaponry for anti-submarine warfare.

When in Vladivostik, Kim visited the Far Eastern Federal University on Russky Island in the Vladivostok harbor, where the Eastern Economic Forum had been held at the start of the week.  Kim met with university students. Lastly, there was a typically Russian cultural note to round out Kim’s program:  a performance of Swan Lake by the Vladivostok affiliate of the Mariinsky Theater (St Petersburg). I mention parenthetically, that the Russian Federation from coast to coast is looked after culturally by its musical and museum powerhouses: Moscow’s Bolshoi theater maintains a similar performance and training outpost in Kaliningrad.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023