Stars and Stripes:
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Design changes to a North Korean missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland should increase its reliability but are likely to delay deployment for at least five years, according to a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile, which was publicly displayed during an October military parade, has been shortened and simplified, according to 38 North, a website run by Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies that monitors North Korean activities. A blunt warhead that is more likely to survive re-entry replaces a narrow, pointed design, and the missile’s three stages have been reduced to two.
“The underlying technology is mostly the same — a blend of North Korean engineering and Cold War leftovers from the Soviet Union — but the structural design has been substantially improved,” the report said Tuesday. “There is reason to suspect that the new structural technology was illicitly obtained from Ukrainian sources…”
