July 7, 2021

S Korea Hedging with its KSS-3 Ballistic Missile Submarines

In response to Sung Chan Lee's comment of July 6, 2021  

I, of course, agree with you Sung Chan Lee.

South Korea (SK) deploying its KSS-3 ballistic missile submarines shows an intention to eventually arm the ballistic missiles with a deterrent warhead - which can only be nuclear.

SK is also signalling the US that it is essential the US maintain the "nuclear umbrella" - a continuing willingness to defend SK with nuclear weapons.

If the SK warheads remained just conventional high explosive this would confuse North Korea (NK) (and everyone else) as to why SK is building ballistic missile submarines of 3,500-4,000 tonnes armed with ballistic missiles with a TOTAL high explosive throw-weight of only 6 to 10 tonnes. 

Even if a tonne of a SK conventional warhead equalled 2 tonnes of old fashioned TNT (TNT being the standard for measuring nuclear yield equivalent ) then a one tonne SK warhead would have a yield of only 0.002 kilotonne.

Meanwhile a single NK SLBM warhead (weighing one tonne) may have a yield of 100 kilotonnes (the usual 2 stage "Teller-Ulam"  thermonuclear weapon minimum) and maybe up to 500 kilotonnes = half a Megatonne.

So SK is hedging. If the US does not plainly indicate it will defend SK by nuclear means (principally against NK but also against China and Russia) then SK's KSS-3s constitute a very viable nuclear weapon delivery platform.

Regards

Pete

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous8/06/2021 5:53 PM

    Hi Pete

    This is a latest information on 3000 ton-class submarines of South Korea [1]. AIP (four PH1 PEM fuel cells) by Bumhan industries is based on GS Caltex’s fuel cell technology using single-stage or multi-stage fuel cell stack [2, 3], but hydrogen supply and storage system which is key technology of fuel cell submarine is not clear. Siemens does not seem to offer its metal hydride cylinder system to this submarine, another system (such as pure hydrogen cylinder) may be used.

    As some important technologies such as diesels and its mounting system are protected by other countries, how does South Korea export abroad?

    [1] https://namu.wiki/w/%EB%8F%84%EC%82%B0%EC%95%88%EC%B0%BD%ED%98%B8%EA%B8%89%20%EC%9E%A0%EC%88%98%ED%95%A8

    [2] https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=ja&sl=ko&u=https://h2news.kr/mobile/article.html%3Fno%3D7022&prev=search&pto=aue

    [3] Patent of Bumhan.

    [4] MTU submarine diesel is protected by bunch of patents. TKMS has patent of diesel mounting system.

    Regards

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pete8/06/2021 10:27 PM

    Thanks Anonymous

    I'll turn your comment into an article next week.

    Regards

    Pete

    ReplyDelete

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