Many of them say Pyongyang has violated its voluntary moratorium commitment, which it assumed in 2001 and confirmed in 2002, during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the first in the history of bilateral relations. The generals interpret this as the unpredictability of Kim Jong-il's regime.
Others say the technical and technological standards of missile production in North Korea are extremely low: at least one of the launched missiles self-destructed in flight.
Professor Anatoly Tsyganok, head of the Military Forecasting Center, said that the launch of the North Korean missiles towards the Pacific was a show of force designed primarily for the United States, and as a bargaining chip at the talks with the U.S. and Japan.
"The authorities in Pyongyang know that they cannot compete with these countries politically, economically or militarily, and are looking for a way to capitulate without losing face, and with a guarantee of compensation," the professor said.
Major General (Ret.) Vladimir Dvorkin, an expert on strategic arms, said there was "no reliable information on the type of the ballistic missiles launched in North Korea. If it was really the long-range Taepodong-2 missile, as the news agencies report, then the launch was totally opportunistic, because North Korea has not yet tested the missile's prototype, Taepodong-1."
The general said the first and only missile launched in August 1998 crashed.
"Pyongyang's statement on launching the missile to orbit a satellite was a bare-faced lie, since the world's monitoring and control systems did not 'see' or 'hear' that satellite," Dvorkin said. "We can assume, therefore, that North Korea made a repeat launch of the Taepodong-1, which failed again."
He said the catastrophe was predictable. To supply such a missile to the armed forces, North Korea should make at least a score of test launches, just as the Soviet Union, the U.S. and other countries possessing missile technologies did. And all of them should be successful. To accomplish this, the country should have a ramified network of trajectory measurements for pinpointing design drawbacks and proving the effectiveness of amendments, which North Korea apparently does not have.
Dvorkin agrees with Tsyganok in that the Tuesday missile launch did not pose a serious military threat now or in the near future. According to them, it was most probably a new provocation aimed at reviving the six-nation talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program, and getting economic aid and security guarantees. Dvorkin said North Korea probably had several nuclear devices, which it could not test because of fear of sanctions, but these were not missile warheads or aviation bombs.
Russian missile designers agree with this view. They refuse to speak about the launches officially, because there is no reliable technical information about the types and tactical technical characteristics of the launched missiles. But they said off record that the accidents during the recent missile tests in North Korea showed that the technological standards of its industry and research & design projects were extremely low.
The attempts to increase the range of old Soviet-made Scud-D missiles by enlarging their fuel tanks and adding stages to the missile cannot ensure the desired result. There are technical limits beyond which quantity turns into plummeting quality, they said.
The launch of the Taepodong-1 in August 1998 and the launch of the Taepodong-2 in July 2006 (if it was the Taepodong) do not mean that Pyongyang has attained the required ICBM design and production level.
None of its missiles can be considered intercontinental or a threat to any of North Korea's close or distant neighbors. At worst, they can fall on their territory in the form of debris. These missiles are a bigger threat to North Korea, whose opportunism in the delicate defense sphere may have dramatic consequences for it, notably loss of civilian lives and destruction.
Experts note one more element of the missile tests: the absence of practical, not verbal, reaction of the U.S. and Japanese air defense structures. The Pentagon promised to down Pyongyang's missiles, but did not. Why? Because it does not want to grapple with Pyongyang, or because its Aegis ballistic missile defense capability is ineffective?
Though Pyongyang's missile launches exposed the country's low research and military-technical capability, they have attained their objective by creating waves. They can spur on the arms race in East Asia, and redirect the world public's attention, busy with Iraq, Afghanistan and international terrorism, to the Korean Peninsula. So, Pyongyang's missiles have not missed their target after all.
