Satellite shows second North Korea missile site

The new launch facility is built on the site of a small village called Pongdong-ni which was displaced during construction. It includes a movable launch pad and 10-story tall tower capable of supporting North Korea's largest ballistic missiles and rockets. It also includes a rocket motor test pad, which Brown and Bermudez said is similar in size and design to a rocket test facility outside of Tehran, Iran. There are also support buildings.

"The discovery of this new facility demonstrates that North Korea is still conducting an ambitious ballistic missile program and may still have plans to launch satellites into space," Brown said.

Bermudez and Brown refer to the site as the Tongch'ang-dong launch facility, naming it after the closest village. U.S. intelligence does not use the same name for the site. Officials would not immediately divulge the term they use.

The base is not quite complete, according to Pike, who reviewed the most recent imagery Tuesday and said it is still missing a vertical assembly building where the missile would undergo its final assembly before being rolled to the launch site. Brown and Bermudez have not yet found optical or radar tracking facilities; they believe North Korea will rely on mobile or shipboard radar systems in tests. They have also not identified fixed air defense systems that would protect the facility from air attack.

Site has key component
But the site does have an engine test stand, a critical facility for measuring vibration from the engines and adjusting guidance systems to account for it, Bermudez said.

"The engine test stand means they now have the ability to increase the reliability of whatever system" they develop, he said.

Brown and Bermudez say the new launch facility is more protected from surveillance aircraft than Musudan-ni because it is mostly surrounded by hills. Its proximity to Chinese airspace could also discourage close observation by plane, as the U.S. military may want to avoid a repeat of the 2001 collision of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter.

North Korea is believed to possess up to a dozen nuclear warheads. The new launch pad would help in the development of missiles to carry them, he said. In 2006, North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test, removing any doubt it had the means to make a nuclear warhead. Its previous missile test showed it also had the means to deliver one.

North Korea has agreed in principle to forswear nuclear weapons and the plutonium used to fuel them. It placed its known plutonium-producing reactor out of commission earlier this year, but has recently backtracked by taking some equipment back out of storage in possible preparation to restart the reactor.

In June, North Korea destroyed the reactor's distinctive conical cooling tower as a symbolic show of good faith with the United States and other nations bargaining with it. But the deal has since stalled over North Korea's obligations to allow intensive international fact-checking of its past nuclear activities.

North Korea claims the U.S. has not held up its end of a nuclear disarmament deal because it has not removed the North from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

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