The GPM Global Forecast is a bi-weekly, members-only article series for 2017. It provides analysis and short-term forecasting on key military, political, and economic events around the globe.

Mystery of North Korea’s Quantum Leap in Missile Technology Solved?

A new study by Michel Elleman of the Institute of Strategic Studies seems to shed some light on how North Korea transformed its missile program from abject failure to existential threat.

Not long ago, the North’s missile program was floundering under the pressure of US-led sanctions, cyberattacks, and sabotage. In the final years of the Obama administration, the expert projection for a nuclear-armed ICBM came in decades, not years. But then the pace of technological progress in the North sped up dramatically. Pyongyang launched a series of successful tests that put continental US cities in missile range for the first time ever. The tests involved a different type of engine, the Soviet-made RD-250 which had formed the basis of the Soviet Union’s long-range missile fleet. Fast-forward to the present and the North’s nuclear capacity is suddenly credible, leaving US military and policy planners scrambling to come up with a response.

So what changed?

According to Elleman, these advances were too rapid and too technologically complex to come from the North’s own R&D team. That leaves imported foreign technology as the only possible explanation for the reversal of fortunes. Elleman singles out a missile factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, as the potential source of the imports. The state-owned factory, called Yuzhmash, has been teetering on the brink of financial disaster over the past couple years. The theory is that Yuzhmash provided the RD-250 engines to Pyongyang in exchange for a financial bailout.

The North’s scientists will be able to reverse engineer the RD-250s and integrate the design into their homegrown missiles, but this will take years. In the meantime, the overriding question is: How many engines did Pyongyang purchase?

If Elleman’s theory is correct, Ukraine is in for some bad optics. Yet given Ukraine’s current geopolitical position, it’s highly unlikely that President Poroshenko would sign off on such a technology transfer. The missiles either came from Yuzhmash via elicit dealings and/or corrupt officials, or the transfer was made to look like it came from Yuzhmash in order to smear Ukraine’s reputation and/or cover up where they actually came from.