Stick around any job long enough and pretty soon you’ll find a pattern of repetition or cycles will emerge. When on active duty, it was inexorably tied to the CVW turnaround training cycle. This year we are now on the threshold of the 3rd North Korean space launch vehicle (SLV) attempt since 2006 and the…
Earlier this week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbital flight, marking our full entry into the space race with the Soviets. Signatory of the mission was our first use of an ICBM to launch Glenn into orbit — the previous missions had been suborbital and used the Redstone missile, itself an SRBM…
Last month Iran unveiled a new long-range missile, the Simorgh, as a follow-on to the Safir SLV. Putatively identified as a space launch vehicle, it bears strong familial ties to the TD-2 prototype SLV/ICBM launched last April (2009). Since then, some analysts have noted that while the airframe has made an appearance sooner than the…
Votkinsk Machine Building Plant. Located about 8.5 km to the east of the birthplace of Pytor Illyich Tchaikovsky, in the Russian Federation Republic of Udmurtia, is an industrial facility whose name, in typical Soviet fashion, obscures the products made there. It is a name unfamiliar to most outside of the arms control, intelligence or…
 We are about one-third of the way through Iran’s annual “Ten Days of Dawn†observation which celebrates the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The occasion serves as a platform for Iran to boast about progress under the Islamic Republic and demonstrate military, scientific…
Part I here. 29 December 2009. In the US, the games of the season are underway, whether it be the NCAA college football bowls or the intramural finger-pointing inside the beltway over the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner. Parts of the US were buried under a new winter storm while other parts continued digging…
If news reports coming from South Korea and echoed through the West are to be believed, North Korea is moving towards another attempt at launching a Taepo Dong – 2 IR/ICBM, ostensibly as a space launch vehicle (SLV). This would be the third such attempt, with previous attempts in July 2006 and Sept 1998 ending…
Reverberations continue this week over the Chinese ASAT test and allegations of Iranian and North Korean cooperative development of nukes and long range missiles; meanwhile Iran continues to rattle the cage with announcement of another Shahab-3 test and a “new†sub-surface ship killer missile; India announces its intent to establish a dedicated aerospace defense command…
