Golf.

This is coolbert:

Kim of Pyongyang desires global reach and is using fifty year old submarine technology to do so?

Strange but true it seems.

"N. Korea launches ballistic missile submarine: gov't sources"

"SEOUL, Nov. 2 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has launched a new submarine capable of firing ballistic missiles, military and government sources in Seoul said Sunday, raising further concerns over the North's evolving missile and nuclear threats."

"The communist country 'imported a Soviet-era Golf-class diesel submarine and modified it,' a government source said on condition of anonymity. The Soviet vessel was built in 1958 and decommissioned in 1990."

. . . .

"Despite a series of reports on Pyongyang's possible development of a new submarine, Seoul military officers have said Pyongyang has not yet acquired technology to deploy submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs)."

NOT a NEW boat as that term understood. This is a very old and out-of-date Golf class submarine from the Soviet era. A missile firing boat that evidently either was bought as surplus or was originally intended as scrap. Has now been modernized [??] and refurbished with the intention of posing at atomic threat to the United States.

Such a boat firing missiles with atomic warheads a definite threat to the United States?

KEEP IN MIND THIS IS A SINGLE BOAT!! SUBMARINE LAUNCHED BALLISTIC MISSILES NOT EVEN AS OBSERVED IN THE INVENTORY OF THE NORTH KOREAN.

Those Soviet Golf class boats firing a LIQUID-FUELLED missile [carrying three missiles] and having to surface to do so.

Later versions of the Golf were able to fire the missiles while submerged?  This vessel  however not even in the same category as an American Polaris or Trident missile firing submarine or even a Soviet/Russian Delta class submersible.

This is much to-do about nothing? A vessel of this type merely in dry dock or sitting in the water for DECADES without proper maintenance or operating in the normal manner cannot be expected to work well even after having undergone a "make-over". There will be all sorts of operational and mechanical difficulties with the Golf even under the best of circumstances. THE SAILING OF THIS VESSEL OF ITSELF IS JUST DOWNRIGHT DANGEROUS TO ALL ONBOARD.

This is the type of foolish gesture and just plain wasteful idiocy as is so common with the dictator of whatever political persuasion? I think so.

coolbert.