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General Radio Discussion / Re: Radio to the rescue!!
« on: December 31, 2019, 1313 UTC »Interesting piece, seems someone can pop a nuke anywhere in orbit and fry stuff around the world. Also note that NK has two "sats" up, they fly over the US a few times a day but apparently have not emitted a peep, causing some to speculate they're emp weapons rather than comsats.
The NKs claim the sats are "Earth observation platforms". Both were supposed to contain UHF transmitters and X band telemetry. The NKs have claimed that the UHF links were used to send patriotic music but no one outside NK ever reported hearing such.
However the first one is in a rapid tumble (can be visually confirmed by anyone with a tracking telescope, I have seen it myself with my own equipment) and has never been confirmed to have sent any transmissions. This means that whatever it is it is probably dead / defunct. Such an uncontrolled tumble would result in power and communications issues, at the least.
The second one is twice as large (about 200 kg) and while it was initially reported as tumbling the tumbling appears to have been brought under control and the sat has made at least one apparently commanded / intentional orbital change. It also has never been confirmed to send any transmissions, however the fact it was tumbling, then stabilized, and made an orbital change could indicate the links are alive and no one has caught them, or that there is an automated system on board to make it look like it is under control. I lean towards the latter myself, at least until someone can determine that there is an operational link off of the bird.
Regardless, I think it very unlikely that either of these would be EMP devices. These are the first two successful sat launches by NK. One of the launches was in late 2012 and the other in early 2016. Even if they can today produce a nuke in this physical size / weight range they cannot have made many of them. It is very unlikely they could have done so in 2012, at that time they had only had 2 partially successful nuclear tests, and nothing even remotely approaching the yield needed for a useful EMP device. Prior to the 2016 launch they had one more test that was probably their first somewhat successful test, a device on the order of the yield of the US WW II weapons. Still too small for any kind of useful space based EMP device. It was not until well after the launch of the 2016 satellite that NK demonstrated the first weapon that might be large enough to be a usefull space based EMP device.
I think that today the NKs could probably produce a useful yield EMP device. I really don't know if they could package it to put it into a ~200'ish kg total all up weight satellite. But even assuming they could today, there is no indication they could (and many indicators it is very unlikely) prior to the launch of either of their two successful sat launches. Today it is assumed NK has ~25'ish nukes, 4 years ago they did not. Trying to put one into space, with a launch program with such a low success rate at the time, seems like a bet not worth taking, the few weapons they had would have been valuable.
No, I doubt the current NK sats are anything more than test articles. They may have been modeled to prepare for future nukes, but I just can't see the existing, in orbit, items being anything of danger. I would be surprised if they were more than a camera, some basic TM, and the basics required to stabilize a sat in orbit.
T!
