RE: North Korea Now Making Missile Ready Nuclear Weapons
August 11, 2017 at 7:00 pm
(This post was last modified: August 11, 2017 at 7:11 pm by Anomalocaris.)
AFAIK, North Korea does not possess a missile range tracking ship required for precise monitoring of over-water long range missile tests. These ships are unmistakable, sporting large radio-telescope like radar dishes and hemispherical telescope domes housing large optical telescopes for precise tracking of reentry vehicles.
However, they may not need one. They tested their missiles in a lofted trajectory flights, where the missile is given the same kinetic energy as expected in operational use, but instead of following typical operational trajectories, the missile is sent on a much higher trajectory that attain an apogee several times higher than the operational trajectory, but covering only a tiny traction of the lateral range of the operational trajectory.
This allows the full energy performance of the missile to be demonstrated, while keeping the missile above visual Horizonte and observable by radar from launch site during most of the flight.
Also, warheads capable of radical terminal maneuver are a relatively new thing even for Russia and china, attained only within the last decade. I highly doubt North Korea is capable of it. North Korean warheads are probably purely ballistic, the impact point of the warhead would be largely set by the final course corrections of the last booster stage, which occurs only a fraction of the way into the entire flight.
So they can tell from radar tracking approximately where the impact point is and how far the missile missed by.
However, they may not need one. They tested their missiles in a lofted trajectory flights, where the missile is given the same kinetic energy as expected in operational use, but instead of following typical operational trajectories, the missile is sent on a much higher trajectory that attain an apogee several times higher than the operational trajectory, but covering only a tiny traction of the lateral range of the operational trajectory.
This allows the full energy performance of the missile to be demonstrated, while keeping the missile above visual Horizonte and observable by radar from launch site during most of the flight.
Also, warheads capable of radical terminal maneuver are a relatively new thing even for Russia and china, attained only within the last decade. I highly doubt North Korea is capable of it. North Korean warheads are probably purely ballistic, the impact point of the warhead would be largely set by the final course corrections of the last booster stage, which occurs only a fraction of the way into the entire flight.
So they can tell from radar tracking approximately where the impact point is and how far the missile missed by.
