In the anxiety of the Asian region, watching an empowered and unchecked North Korea while awaiting a strong leadership response by the President of the United States, it is of miraculous amazement that a deprived and poverty stricken nation could rapidly develop a sea- and land-mobile solid fuel rocket capability with generational leaps of technical engineering tested, applied, and proven. In the last year, these leaps are a compression air ejected submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) that propels the fully fueled and extremely heavy missile in a perfect vertical position to stabilize in mid-air before igniting its solid fuel engine. The most recent submarine missile test on land used a much more difficult lofted trajectory than a normal ballistic trajectory, that throttled its burn to create a more vertical reentry in order to test its warhead and reentry vehicle at higher speeds. The absolute awe of the aerospace engineering, let alone the mechanical and overall systems engineering of just coupling the missile to a transportable erector launcher on a very modernized mobile vehicle, is a remarkable feat and an outrageous achievement that overcomes all existing Iranian and Pakistani ballistic missile development programs by generations. The recent North Korean test of this weapon system displayed a specialized focus on capabilities to defeat and overcome the current sophisticated and complex United States missile defense systems on the Korean Peninsula, that would require an extremely powerful, intelligent, and sophisticated agency and an advanced military infrastructure to produce these tactics and capabilities.

In comparison, the United States alone, to independently and from scratch create, develop, and test a capability similar to the North Korea achievement last Sunday would have taken at least $10 billion, 10 years, and a matured industrial and government base with thousands of highly educated and talented engineers, along with national labs and research facilities. In addition, the U.S. would also require an experienced department of defense development and acquisition organization to manage the training, manning, and operations of this system.

Unequivocally, North Korea is simply not capable of developing a completely organic, sophisticated, and complex sea- and land-mobile solid fuel missile that successfully flew a lofted trajectory. North Korea doesn’t have the industry base, the massive foundational engineering and technology research infrastructure for production, assembly and quality control to independently build the ballistic missile that was demonstrated on Sunday. For the North Korea regime’s existence and the Supreme Leader’s prosperity, North Korea is benefiting from someone else’s technology, industry infrastructure, engineering, training, doctrine, resources, and a shared commonality of intent to prevent the reunification of Korea, maintain the armistice, and banish American forces from the Korean Peninsula.

The indications and intent of the quality and quantity of ballistic missile and nuclear testing show it is much more than the limited industry capability and capacity of a poverty stricken North Korea and its Supreme Leader that has been enabled to prove remarkable genius military technical prowess to defeat and deter the most powerful nation in the world and its allies of Japan and South Korea.

There needs to be an end to it and China, not the Supreme Leader of North Korea, is the enabler of a sophisticated nuclear ballistic missile North Korea (Click here to read an article about how the Polaris-1 is similar to China’s JL-1 SLBM). China is the key and needs to be brought in to solve the North Korea dilemma with the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

We had the honor to visit the Republic of Korea over the past four days, including Sunday when North Korea tested their ballistic missile. We also had the opportunity to visit the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and Observatory Point Dora, (News article on the visit) where we viewed North Korea and its desolation of isolation across the valley, scattered with ghost towns and poverty. It is of human tragedy that North Korea is enabled to do what it does.