Inclusion of a US maker's diesel engine and a German manufacturer's automatic transmission system in a missile launch vehicle seen in a military parade raises questions over the efficacy of international efforts to contain North Korea's nuclear weapons threat. The parts won't spare blushes in the American administration for admonishing China's technological role in Pyongyang.
- Kosuke Takahashi (Apr 23, '12)
US plays a bit part in Pyongyang's paradeBy Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - Are the United States and Germany birds of a feather flocking together with China?
A US maker's diesel engine and a German manufacturer's automatic transmission system may have been used for a missile launch vehicle seen in a military parade in Pyongyang on April 15, raising questions over the efficacy of the international effort to contain and reverse Pyongyang's nuclear weapons threat, Asia Times Online has learned.
Although the US has raised allegations that China has supplied North Korea with technology for its missile program, the US itself would be under fire over having provided some help for North Korea's mobile missile technology, whether indirectly or not.
Military experts around the world have pointed out the 16-wheeler transporter-erector-launcher (TEL) vehicle that transported North Korea's new missile in Pyongyang on April 15 appeared to very similar to the WS-51200, manufactured by the 9th Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), also known as the Hubei Sanjiang Space Wanshan Special Vehicle Co Ltd. [1] This maker of special-purpose vehicles produces the WS series of TELs that are used to deploy the DF-11, DF-16 and DF-21 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles made by the CASIC, the large state-owned hi-tech enterprise under direct control of China's central government.
"For the US, this is as if a ladder were taken off suddenly," Narushige Michishita, an associate professor of security and international studies at National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, told Asia Times Online. "Amid international frustration against China's stance against North Korea, the US seems to have aimed to take this opportunity to press hard on Beijing further. But it may now become difficult."
According to the Hubei Sanjiang Space Wanshan Special Vehicle Co's website, the US diesel engine manufacturer Cummins Inc, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, provided its KTTA19-C700 diesel engine for the WS-51200. Meanwhile, German's ZF Friedrichshafen, one of the world's leading automotive industry suppliers specializing in driveline and chassis technologies, supplied its automatic transmission called WSK440+16S251 for the WS-51200.
Breach of UNSC resolutions?
Providing a TEL to Pyongyang would put the nation responsible in breach of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1874, which was adopted in June 2009 and prohibits supplying North Korea with "any arms or related materiel, or providing financial transactions, technical training, services or assistance related to such arms".
The TEL would also have been banned under UNSC Resolution 1718, which was adopted in October 2006 in the aftermath of the North's first nuclear test in the same month. Those sanctions prohibit the import of any "vehicles designed or modified for the transport, handling, control, activation and launching" of "complete rocket systems (including ballistic missile systems, space launch vehicles and sounding rockets)".
Apparently uninformed about a US diesel engine maker's indirect involvement in Chinese-made special-purpose vehicle WS-51200, US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland on April 20 told reporters that the US raised the issue during ongoing talks with the Chinese government on North Korea.
United States Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also said in US Congressional testimony on April 19 that he was "sure there has been some help coming from China. I don't know the exact extent of that ... but clearly there has been assistance along those lines".
Panetta also said the US was concerned about "the mobile capabilities that were on display in the parade recently in North Korea. The bottom line is that if they have a mobile capability to have ICBMs [inter-continental ballistic missiles] deployed in that manner then that increases the threat from North Korea".
The Chinese government has denied its involvement and sanctions-busting. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a regular news briefing on April 19 that China was against the spread of weapons of mass destruction and carriers for such weapons.
A Chinese company is suspected of providing components for a mobile missile platform showcased in a recent parade in North Korea, Reuters reported on Saturday quoting a US official. "The [Barack] Obama administration suspects the Chinese manufacturer sold the chassis - not the entire vehicle - and may have believed it was for civilian purposes, which means it would not be an intentional violation of UN sanctions," the news agency said.
The US State Department said it believed Chinese assurances that it was adhering to UN sanctions. ''I think we take them at their word,'' spokesman Mark Toner told reporters on April 19.
Mystery of WS-51200
The WS-51200 resembles the vehicle that carried the North Korea's new missile, which was unveiled on 15 April at a parade in Pyongyang marking the centenary of founder Kim Il-sung's birth.
It has a gross vehicle mass of 122 tons and it can carry a load of 80 tons. It measures 20.11 meters long, 3.35 meters wide, 3.35 meters high. The diameter of the tire is 1.6 meter. The length of that new missile on the vehicle is about 18 meter, bigger than North Korea's mobile intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) Musudan but smaller than its long-range missile Taepodong-2, which showed an unabashed failure of the rocket launch on April 13.
Military experts around the world are now figuring out if this is a new type of IRBM or a new intercontinental ballistic missile(ICBM) or just a mock for a military parade, not real one.
The CASIC announced in October 2010 that it had closed a contract to export WS-51200 with a certain nation, presumably North Korea, and that the amount of contact with that nation was 30 million yuan (US$4.75 million) including an advance payment of 12 million yuan. [2]
Then, in May 2011 the CASIC also announced its subsidiary company successfully finished developing WS-51200. [3]
The Mainichi Shimbun, a Japanese daily newspaper, on April 16 reported from Beijing that by citing intelligence community, Hubei Sanjiang Space Wanshan Special Vehicle CO loaded four WS-51200 vehicles onto a ship with Cambodian nationality around August 2011. This ship headed for North Korea's Namp'o port, the newspaper said.
Notes
1. See here.
2. See here.
3. See here.
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. Besides Asia Times Online, he also writes for Jane's Defence Weekly as Tokyo correspondent. His twitter is @TakahashiKosuke
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