North Korea: Building Missiles Armed with Anthrax That Can Hit America?
Dave Majumdar
Security, Asia
Or...a rumor gone mad?
North Korea might be trying to equip its new intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal with biological weapons—specifically anthrax—according to a new report.
The report from the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun cites a South Korean intelligence source that suggested that Pyongyang has tested loading anthrax onto its ICBMs. According to Asahi’s source, Pyongyang is “conducting heat and pressure resistance tests” to see if the anthrax bacteria can survive the 7,000 degrees Celsius or higher temperatures that an reentry vehicle would encounter upon reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. According to the Asahi report, North Korea has already conducted a successful experiment with such weapons.
According to Asahi’s source, the North Koreans are developing the biological weapons payload because they are not yet fully confident that they can deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere inside the United States just yet. However, most of the arms control community seems to believe that Pyongyang already has such a capability—or at the very least—will have such a capability in the very near future.
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Arms control experts are skeptical about the Asahi report, noting that it would be very difficult to engineer a way to keep the anthrax bacteria alive during reentry.
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