Chapter 477 North Korea’s Ballistic Missiles

For the Soviet Union, the Scud missile was just a technology from the 1950s. It could even be traced back to the missile technology obtained from Germany at the end of World War II. It was already a completely obsolete technology. However, the Soviet elimination did not mean that this weapon could be proliferated at will!

A distinctive feature of ballistic missiles is the disproportionate investment in offense and defense. Ballistic missiles are fast and difficult to intercept. If one invests 100 million in missile research, then at least 1 billion must be invested to develop how to intercept! In later generations, the ballistic missile defense plan that the United States spent a huge amount of money on was very difficult to intercept missiles with known trajectories, and it was even more difficult to intercept unknown missiles. The previous experiments were more like carefully shot mid-air collisions than successful interceptions! For the attacker, as long as the direction of the missile's re-entry is changed, that is, the re-entry trajectory is changed, the interceptor missile can lose its target.

That was in the future! Nowadays, intercepting ballistic missiles is even more difficult. Even a Scud missile cannot be intercepted by a division-level force!

The North Koreans are simply challenging the Soviet Union's reverse scale. Exporting tanks to the Iranians has already made the Soviet Union extremely angry, and now, they are secretly exporting ballistic missiles to Iran!

There are many theories about North Korea's ballistic missiles in history. Some even say that the Soviet Union exported Scud missiles to North Korea, which was the beginning of North Korea's ballistic missile industry. But this is of course extremely wrong. You must know that North Korea is focused on developing its military strength and has no determination to develop its economy. North Korea's economy is extremely backward and it cannot pay for ballistic missiles like the Soviet Union!

North Korea only wants food and weapons! In the past, North Korea was also a bridgehead in the struggle between the East and the West, and the Soviet Union supported it for its own strategy, but what about now? North Korea is already a discarded pawn in the Soviet Union's strategic layout, and it doesn't play a big role. It is impossible for the Soviet Union to export Scud missiles, a powerful weapon, to North Korea.

Moreover, even in the past, that is, after the 1960s, North Korea was on the left and on the right in the Sino-Soviet conflict in order to profit from it and try to manipulate the Soviet Union. Therefore, the Soviet Union was very wary of North Korea. It was not an obedient little brother at all!

Exporting to Iraq is because Iraq has money! Exporting to Egypt and Syria is to make them fight Israel!

North Korea is also seeking change when it is in trouble. Its determination to develop its own ballistic missile industry has never changed. North Korea's ballistic missiles were obtained from Egypt.

After the Six-Day War, Egypt, which was full of anger at the time, was very dissatisfied with the Soviet Union's "inaction" at the time. The relationship between Egypt and the Soviet Union became worse and worse. However, Egypt's development could not be separated from the help of the Soviet Union. Therefore, Egypt, which was self-reliant, decided to seek help from North Korea. North Korea also hoped to train pilots through actual combat, and the two sides hit it off.

Therefore, North Korea sent a large number of excellent volunteer pilots to Egypt and participated in the Yom Kippur War. In this war, the pilots of the North Korean Air Force fought bravely and helped the Egyptian brothers to vent their anger. Taking this as an opportunity, the relationship between Egypt and North Korea soared, and Mubarak also established a deep friendship with Kim Il-sung.

At this time, North Korea expressed its desire to obtain Scud missiles, and Egypt immediately transferred two R-17E, or Scud-B missiles, and 9P117 launch vehicles to North Korea. These weapons were all aided by the Soviet Union to Egypt.

It was transported back to Nampo Port by a North Korean cargo ship and entered the Pyongyang "January 25 Machinery Factory" under the Second Economic Committee, also known as the "Pyongyang Pig Farm". The North Koreans began to imitate it. North Korea's efforts to obtain ballistic missiles finally became a reality. Combined with North Korea's original technological accumulation, North Korea's own missiles were soon imitated.

After two years of hard work, North Korea successfully copied the first batch of domestically produced Scud missiles in 1975 and named them "Hwasong"-1. Of course, this model was not announced by North Korea itself, but was given to North Korea by the outside world. Hwasong is a county in North Hamgyong Province, North Korea. Because the specific model and name of North Korean missiles are unknown, they are named according to convention, that is, the name of the region where a certain model of missile first appears.

This earliest Hwasong-1 missile was almost identical to its prototype Scud B missile, with a total length of 11.37m, a diameter of 0.88m, a launch mass of 5.9 tons, a maximum range of 300km, and used TM185 kerosene/red smoke nitric acid propellant. Due to the lack of a high-precision inertial navigation system, the missile's circular error was quite large, exceeding one thousand meters.

In history, another development of North Korea's ballistic missiles came from the Iran-Iraq War. At that time, Iraq's Scud missiles were wreaking havoc on Iranian territory, and Iran was in urgent need of the same weapons. Therefore, Iran reached an agreement with North Korea to import Hwasong-1 tactical missiles. In this way, North Korea's ballistic missile industry finally ushered in a healthy development, using North Korea's funds to continuously improve their weapons! As a result, the new "Hwasong"-3/4 and "Hwasong"-5/6 began to appear in North Korea's ballistic missile sequence, with a range of 500km.

Moreover, based on these experiences, North Korea's new Nodong ballistic missile has also entered rapid development.

For North Korea, if they want to develop ballistic missiles, they need to find a financial sponsor, and for Iran, if they want to win the Iran-Iraq War, they need to introduce new weapons. The two sides almost hit it off.

Even now, with Andre's travel through time, the situation has changed a lot, but the result will not change.

The North Koreans and Iranians came together, but this coming together has seriously damaged the interests of the Soviet Union! The tanks exported by North Korea to Iran almost pushed the 105th Airborne Division into a desperate situation. Now, once North Korea's ballistic missiles appear in the hands of the Iranians, they will cause casualties to the Soviet army!

Fortunately, the actions of North Korea and Iran were not as fast as ours. They certainly did not anticipate the Soviet attack, so the ballistic missiles transported by these cargo ships were seized by the Soviet army before they could be moved to the front line!

"Put me in the Kremlin." Andrei picked up the phone.