[For images of North Korea’s nuclear sites, click here; for updates and commentary on North Korea’s latest nuclear test, click here; for more Google Earth imagery of North Korea, click here.]
North Korea’s airfields are some of the most interesting places to spy on, and often, some of the easiest to spot. Generally, you can see a large airfield from about 10 miles up, with or without high resolution coverage. Although you can’t identify aircraft without high resolution, as you will see, even with high resolution, the image quality varies from disappointingly blurry to remarkably crisp.
I cross-referenced much of what I saw here with Global Security, an excellent source generally, although its limitions when it comes to North Korea are both clear and understandable. Some of the airfields Global Security marks don’t exist where noted, and in at least one case, I was able to identify a type of large transport helicopter that they don’t list in the North Korean inventory. Thus, in some cases, and thanks to the miracle of Google Earth, this post may actually be more definitive and authoritative — though less complete — than the information on the Global Security site, and should at least be read as a supplement to it. Here’s a quote from Global Security’s summary and analysis of the North Korean Peoples’ Army Air Force:
As of 1996 the North Korean air force consisted of six air divisions under the direct control of the national Air Command: three are composed of fighter wings, two of transportation wings, and one for fighter training.
North Korea has approximately seventy air bases, including jet and non-jet capable bases and emergency landing strips, with aircraft deployed to between twenty and thirty of them. The majority of tactical aircraft are concentrated at air bases around P’yongyang and in the southern provinces. P’yongyang can place almost all its military aircraft in hardened–mostly underground–shelters. North Korean aircraft are sheltered in underground hangars and plenty of runways are available. In the KPDR there is absolutely no private vehicle ownership but many highways with concrete surfaces and arched reinforced concrete tunnels (for example the superhighway linking Pyongyang with Wonsan), that in case of hostilities are sure to be used as military airfields. It thus seems highly improbable that the NKAF would be knocked out in one strike. North Korea deployed about fifty percent of its fighters in the front area which makes a possible surprise attack to all areas of South Korea. In 1990-91, North Korea activated four forward air bases near the DMZ, which increased its initial southward reach and decreased warning and reaction times for Seoul.
More than 420 fighters, bombers, transport planes, and helicopters were redeployed in October 1995, and more than 100 aircraft were moved forward to the three air bases near the DMZ. More than 20 Il-28 bombers were moved to Taetan which shortened their arrival time to Seoul from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. Over 80 MiG-17s redeployed to Nuchonri and Kuupri are able to attack Seoul in 6 minutes. By these redeployments North Korea intends to make a first strike with outdated MiG-17s and the second strike with mainstay fighters such as MiG-21s and Su-25s.
Here’s an overview of the North Korean military airfields that can be seen on Google Earth. What’s most notable is the nearly complete absence of civil aviation.
Those with numbers assigned are visible with high resolution. Those simply marked “airfield” are visible with low resolution only. Numbers in bold below correspond to the numbers marked on the overview map above.
1: MiG-17’s and 19’s are two of the three most common fighter aircraft on North Korean airfields. The 17’s have the stubby wings with the rounded ends; the 19’s are more sharply swept and angular.
2: The other common type is the MiG-21, with its distinctive delta-shaped wing. Kim Jong Il purchased 40 of these from Kazakhstan at the height of the Great Famine, when people were wandering in from the countryside and dying in heaps in front of train stations. Some of the MiG-21’s pictured here may be Chinese-made F-7’s, which have slight extensions on their wingtips. According to the Global Security map, this is Chunghwa AB.
Frequently, the MiG-21’s you see don’t appear to be in working order. Some are clearly stripped of parts, decaying, or even sitting in ponds of standing water. Many appear to be mere decoys.
You can see a better close-up view at the airfield marked 13. The planes on the left are MiG-17’s.
3: These swing-wing fighters are probably MiG-23’s. Global Security doesn’t list North Korea as having the only other aircraft this could be, the MiG-27, which is based on the same airframe and indistinguishable from the MiG-23 with this resolution. The 23 is a fighter; the 27 is a ground-attack aircraft, and much more advanced.
4: There are thirty of these blurry things, and if you can identify them, you know something I don’t. The don’t look like any of the older MiG or Sukhoi models. Could these be North Korea’s MiG-29’s? Or could they be something else entirely? The image quality isn’t good enough to even make a firm guess.
Global Security identifies this location as the Headquarters of the 1st Air Combat Command, Kaechon AB.
5: You can see many more MiG 17’s, 19’s, and 21’s here, at Wonsan AB, right next to what I believe is one of Kim Jong Il’s palaces. See also the location marked 13.
6: I found large bombers in one location, at an airfield near Sinuiju. These ancient leviathans are Il-28 “Beagles,” first flown by the Soviets in 1948. The Chinese built their own version of the Beagle under license as the H-5. You can still see a number of these on Chinese airfields.
Global Security claims that North Korea has 80 Il-28’s. You can see more than 40 on this airfield. The others could be underground, or there could be another airfield, such as the Taetan airfield to which Global Security refers in its summary.
Note that half of the airfield was imaged during summer and half during the winter (thus, we could be counting some planes twice, and some not at all). In the second image, you can see a camouflage net at the end of the taxiway, covering the entrance to what may be an underground hangar. In the third image, the Beagles’ Klimov VK-1 turbojet engines have blown and melted the snow right off the ground.
7: These are the only helicopters I’ve found in North Korea, and I’ve searched far and wide. If you’ve found others, by all means, please tell me where. This is a group of about a dozen Mil-8 utility helicopters and a few Mil-4 observation helicopters. According to Global Security, North Korea only has 15 Mil-8’s. [See update below.]
These four very large craft that appear to be Mil-26’s. The Mil-26 is the largest and most powerful helicopter in the world, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Interestingly, Global Security does not list North Korea as having any of these — or any other large helicopter — in its inventory. Thus, with the exception of a large number of tiny Mil-2 Hoplites, you’re looking at a good share of the North Korean helicopter force right here.
Equally interesting: were an insurgency to break out in North Korea, the government could count on neither a good network of roads nor a large force of helicopters. That means that if insurgents could be supplied with food, arms, and ammunition in a remote area, the army would have trouble accessing them, and probably couldn’t count on much support from road-bound armor or artillery, either.
8: Here are some of the An-2 “Colt” biplanes that North Korea uses for both civilian and military purposes. Reportedly, some of these biplanes were built in North Korea under license. Don’t underestimate them because they’re biplanes. Though old and slow, they have an amazing amount of lift and can take off and land on very small unimproved runways. With their wood and fabric structure, they’re also very difficult to detect on radar. In the event of war, North Korea would use them for the delivery of special forces and paratroopers for deep penetration missions. These are at a small airstrip and could be for civilian use.
9: These, however, clearly appear to be for military use, judging by the revetments in which they’re parked.
10: The North Koreans are second to none at tunneling, and here is one of two front-line airfields — see also number 14 – where you can’t see any working aircraft on the surface, but you can clearly see the underground hangars at the ends of the curved taxiways leading from the main airfield. See also the airfield marked 15.
11: The most modern aircraft I’ve seen in North Korea is the Su-25 ground attack aircraft, which was first used in combat by the Soviet Air Force in Afghanistan. North Korea has about 30 of them, according to Global Security. If so, this appears to be most of them.
If the Soviets first deployed the Su-25 in the mid-1980’s, you would think that the North Koreans wouldn’t have gotten them until the mid-1990’s. That happens to correspond to the beginning of North Korea’s Great Famine, which killed approximately 2 million people, most of them between 1994 and 1998. North Korea’s agricultural production and food supply have never recovered, and it remains dependent on the aid of the same neighbors it threatens. It has received approximately $200 million in international food aid from the U.N. World Food Program alone each year ever since (until it kicked out most of the World Food Program staff at the end of 2005). Assuming a unit cost of $12 million per aircraft and accessories, you’re looking at approximately $216 million worth of Russian airplanes. That’s enough to feed all of the 6.5 million North Koreans included in a typical year’s World Food Program appeal for a year, with enough left over to throw in some extra sugar rations.
12: Finally, here is an aircraft that confused me for some time because of its familiarity to World War II vets, airplane enthusiasts, and dope smugglers everywhere. Clearly, this is a DC-3, a/k/a C-47, right?
Close. On further research, I learned that the Soviets built a copy of the DC-3 under license as the Lisunov Li-2. That appears to be what we have here.
Update: NK Econ Watch points out this helipad in the middle of Pyongyang, 2 miles East by Southeast of the May Day Stadium, on the North bank of the Taedong River. There are six Mil-8 Hips sitting on the tarmac.
Update 2: Here’s an underground runway being built right through a mountain:
More commentary on this site here.
