« The bottom line is if they want to have high reliability and understand that it’s reliable, they’ re going to have to launch a missile on a flatter…
But according to Mike Elleman, the senior fellow for missile defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, if North Korea wants a truly reliable intercontinental ballistic missile, it will have to eventually fire one at or over another country.
When a missile fires almost vertically, the missile’s warhead, or reentry vehicle, enters the earth at an angle almost perpendicular to the earth’s surface. Elleman says this provides a symmetrical distribution of heat and pressure on the vehicle, which travels at many times the speed of sound.
But when an ICBM has to actually fire at an angle to cover long distances, as is the whole point of an ICBM, it faces much different challenges. « When it comes in at a flattened out trajectory, it will experience a longer heating time and mechanical loads or de-acceleration loads over a longer period of time, » as well as asymmetrical pressure and heat, said Elleman.
So while North Korea’s latest missile tests tell them a lot about how to launch a rocket and drop a warhead back down, they don’t tell them much about fighting the earth’s atmosphere or how to guide the missile.
