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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Did SOF Sabotage the NoDong? |
| 2006-07-10 |
| Is this believable? Sabotage potential We have no evidence that the U.S. was able to sabotage North Korea's Taepodong-2 missile, which malfunctioned 42 seconds into launch on Tuesday and crashed. But we do note that special operations forces (SOF) are playing an increasing role, overt and covert, in the world under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's rule. We also note that one of the reasons that SOF procured the powerful .50- caliber Barrett's sniper rifle was to have the capability to disable ballistic missiles. It's a scenario for missile defense you won't see in any literature from the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency: insert a commando behind the lines, who positions himself within shooting range of the launchpad. "One of the original reasons for procuring the .50-caliber sniper system was to disable missiles," a SOF source says. "A round pumped in prior to launch, or during to cover the noise, in the right place would cause a catastrophic malfunction." |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #12 The Taepodong is named after the launch site (whose name translates roughly to "big hole on a beach" Oddly prophetic, considering how well (poorly) it flew. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-07-10 23:41 |
| #11 Chemical megawatt laser? Space based platform? I know, prolly not. But let me have my fantasy. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2006-07-10 23:12 |
| #10 Mike: I don't know what the Korean names translate to, though I'm pretty confident that they don't name their missiles after penis jokes. The Nodong is just the Korean word for "labor". The Taepodong is named after the launch site (whose name translates roughly to "big hole on a beach", kind of like the way many places are named after distinctive geographical features). |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-07-10 23:03 |
| #9 Anyone seen Sam Fisher recently? |
| Posted by: Glogum Thaviling3232 2006-07-10 21:23 |
| #8 As I've speculated elsewhere, wouldn't it be hypothetically interesting if we had some kind of device that could invisibly interfere with a rocket at launch from a great distance away, say very high altitude or even from space? All it would have to do is affect the metal in some way--not even an obvious way--that weakens it just a little bit. All sorts of radiation can do that. Just make it a tad more flexible, or a scoonch more brittle. Metallurgy sometimes seems indistinguishable from magic. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-07-10 21:15 |
| #7 Well, I am no small arms expert, but a quick Google search for the M107 sniper rifle shows a maximum effective range of less than 2500 meters. This would mean that the sniper would have to be probably within 1000 meters of the launch pad. I cannot believe that anything larger than a mouse get that close to the missile. (and the mouse would probably have been eaten.) |
| Posted by: Rambler 2006-07-10 19:13 |
| #6 Someone has taken serious license with the name of the Taepodong-2 unless, of course, this means "no dong" in Korean. The NorKs have three missile designs, the "Hwasong," which is a back-engineered Scud, the "Nodong," which is a larger missile based loosely on the Scud design, and the "Taepodong," which is more or less a Hwasong stacked on top of a Nodong. I don't know what the Korean names translate to, though I'm pretty confident that they don't name their missiles after penis jokes. Can't imagine that would sit well with the Dear Leader. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-07-10 18:34 |
| #5 Is this believable? Can't hurt to let the Norks wonder. |
| Posted by: xbalanke 2006-07-10 17:48 |
| #4 LOL. Someone has taken serious license with the name of the Taepodong-2 unless, of course, this means "no dong" in Korean. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2006-07-10 17:46 |
| #3 A missile with a half-inch hole in it is more likely to fail at Max-Q than one without. Just sayin', that's all... { ;^) |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2006-07-10 17:44 |
| #2 NoKo failure occured at Max-Q, the portion of the flight when the vehicle is undergoing maximum stress. Nothing to do with sabotage. The rocketry learning curve is steep, expensive and littered with failures. For a county like North Korea with only a rudimentary scientific and industrial base, failures will be even more common. |
| Posted by: john 2006-07-10 17:19 |
| #1 Finally! A conspiracy theory I can embrace! |
| Posted by: Unique Battle 2006-07-10 17:17 |