Rostock 2019 – scientific programme

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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 3: North Korea, Missile Defense and new Challenges for Arms Control

AGA 3.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 14, 2019, 14:00–15:00, U HS 3 Parkstr. 6

North Korean Long-Range Ballistic Missiles and US Missile Defenses — •Ted Postol — MIT, Boston

This talk explains how the North Korean liquid propellant ballistic missile program has been able to advance from its earliest days at an unprecedented rate. It will be shown that the program has received - almost certainly without the knowledge of the Russian government - large amounts of Russian rocket components and expertise, starting from the time of the catastrophic simultaneous collapse of the Soviet Union and its economy. Another feature of the North Korean program is the startling level of indigenous innovation demonstrated in North Korean ballistic missile designs, which very cleverly use rocket components that were intended for other purposes. This talk will also briefly introduce a missile defense concept that could potentially allow the US to destroy North Korean ICBM-range ballistic missiles while they are in powered flight. Unlike the current Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD), this distinctly new defense concept can be built with existing demonstrated technologies and does not require violations of fundamental physical principles to work reliably.