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Ng Han Guan / AP, file
In this photo taken on April 15, 2012, what appears to be a new missile is carried during a mass military parade at the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea. The photo shows the warhead's surface is undulated, suggesting it's a thin metal sheet unable to withstand flight pressure, analysts say.
The Associated Press reports — Analysts who have studied photos of a half-dozen ominous new North Korean missiles showcased recently at a lavish military parade say they were fakes, and not very convincing ones, casting further doubt on the country's claims of military prowess.
The weapons displayed April 15 appear to be a mishmash of liquid-fuel and solid-fuel components that could never fly together. Undulating casings on the missiles suggest the metal is too thin to withstand flight. Each missile was slightly different from the others, even though all were supposedly the same make. They don't even fit the launchers they were carried on.
Ng Han Guan / AP, file
Adding more doubt to North Korea's claims of military prowess after its flamboyant rocket launch failure, analysts say the half dozen missiles showcased at the military parade were low-quality fakes.
"There is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups," Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, of Germany's Schmucker Technologie, wrote in a paper posted recently on the website Armscontrolwonk.com that listed those discrepancies. "It remains unknown if they were designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers simply did some sloppy work." Read the full story.
David Guttenfelder / AP, file
North Korean civilians, some weeping, wave flowers as they look up at Kim Jong Un, unseen, at the end of the military parade on April 15, 2012.
Richard Engel, NBC's chief foreign correspondent, shares a rare and revealing look inside the reclusive kingdom of North Korea.
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The surface of the rocket has a tiger striped texture common from coating with a flat paint from a spray can or poor application w/a paint gun. The missle is real. The pentagon should consult some of their vehicle pool body men before jumping to conclusions. Its very obvious to me.
Fabulous Fakes !!!
North Korea is a joke !
Kind of reminds you of the Peter Sellers movie "The Mouse That Roared", where a small nation decided to attack the United States, so that it would be defeated; and, it would then be eligible for U.S. aid...in this case, North Korea builds the funniest-looking "fake" missiles, so that they can (1) convince their people that the whole "North Korean Communism" thing is relevant to 2012, (2) attempt to either scare the crap out of their surrounding neighbors or get them to die from laughter, (3) get the attention of Hollywood set designers, who could make the "Fabulous Fake" North Korean parade missiles to look as good as the vehicles on the "Transformer" movies, if North Korea had the money to buy their talent, and (4) justify how they can starve their own people by putting their military priorities ahead of their populace...
With the pre-hyped popularity of the "Avengers" movie, coming out, shortly, maybe the North Korean "anti-think tank" could display a North Korean Super Hero, complete with really good fake weaponry and a song to go along with the latest North Korean myth...
Until they set one off, right outside the Kim Jong house, I'm going with "they're as fake as William Shatner's hair." sentiment.
Why would you paint a missile camouflage?
so that the missle and launcher can be positioned out in the woods or wherever it is needed and harder to spot.
They would have paraded out a real one, but they didn't have a big enough ladder to finish painting it with a bucket and brush.
Serious Napoleon complex.
The missiles in Team America looked more real than these things!
Those misiles are not fake, they're just fireworks for new years day celebration.
As fake as their tough war talk.
The last line says it all. We do not know if this was to confuse western analysts or just sloppy work. My guess is the former. Why show the world what you have in your arsenal, especially when you are a rogue nation hell bent on secrecy.
Oh no! The truth is out. Now who are we going to defend against? How do we justify spending all that money on a military that defends us from fake missles? I guess the laugh is on us, the US tax payers.
Looks like cardboard covered material to me. The "Emperora's New Clothes" goes millitary.
N. Korea cannot afford new missiles. Had it not been for Russia, and China, they wouldn't have the military equipment they do have. And i saw that equipment when i was stationed there in the 70's. Its all freshly painted over rust. ALL of the military equipment they had was freshly painted over for our tour of Pyongyang. We were ordered not to snicker or laugh. No B.S.! Our commander ordered us NOT to laugh openly while we were there!
The N. Korean soldiers were so proud! They stood there, as if trying to mock us, pointedly avoiding our stares. I almost felt sorry for them. As soon as the tour group reached the American side of the D.M.Z., we all were laughing hard! That night, the N. Koreans poured machine gun fire over our outpost's, we were not allowed to fire back. That was not so funny!
N. Korea has always been nothing but a military joke! Sure, they do have alot of men, and weapons to fight with, but, would the material stand up today?
I'm surprised they didn't attempt to make a missile out of a 1975 Lincoln town car.
A dictator with a small penis will normally stuff a banana or a rolled up handkerchief in his pants. The Kim Dynasty has a small penis complex covered up with FAKE missiles.
Well america faked landing on the moon, why can't others fake missiles.
Get off.
smaller the penis, smaller the importance, bigger the noise. Kim is a penis head.
The image of the rocket's cone, the top 1/4 of it, looks like it's sagging - which is what I assume the commentators are talking about. NK is really messed up. Focusing on military might while their people starve is not something any country should do.
I feel so incredibly sorry for the citizens of that country. To be so brainwashed for so long. I get aggravated even further when I see all the pissing and moaning going on in our country over "small stuff" in comparison.
Fake or not the media should not have posted or printed articals on it. It's better for the N.Koreans to think they have fooled their enemys, and to keep building mock missles as a deterant. Now that the media has let this info. out we will find that all the media has done is provoked N.Korea to demonstrate how real their missles are. Should things get hot again EXPECT China to once again step in to help out. Remember our guys were getting wiped out becouse there were so many enemy combatants we were running out of bullets. Our troops would be lucky to survive the initial attack, and those that did would be dead before reenforcements could arrive. N.Korea will use what nuclear weapons they have, and our only hope of winning the war will be to use nuclear weapons ourselfs. There is a reason we have put up with N.Korea shelling islands, sinking ships,and making nuclear weapons as a war with them will be very nasty.
North Korea's "military" is the equivalent of being the bully in the special ed class.
Sure they're fake.
Just like the phony "rocket", that no one saw lift off or crash - considering all the eyes of the world were on it at the time, and you guys ever ran satellite images of the site - you mean to tell me there's not one photo, or frame of video to prove that event ever even took place? Suspicious as hell. I did however really enjoy your photos of that phony-as-hell "Control Room" a few days prior, showing a couple of cheapo Acer monitors sitting on a folding table, with a couple of wired Radio Shack keyboards and mice, and a nice big screen on the wall. Wow, some "control room"...
That and that foam model they're displaying of that downed drone, that they claim they've completely reverse engineered in only a few months...
Sure... right...
Iran has the drone.
You say fake and I say inert; our displays in the public within the United States and used for training are inert or fake if you like. Be careful in what you find on the internet.
Dear Leader gone forever. Thank God.
those missiles are green like my turtle. i like turtles.