Chiang Mai (Mizzima) - Burma’s reported program to manufacture Scud-type ballistic missiles could tilt the balance of power in Southeast Asia and provoke a regional arms race, warns author and Burma expert Bertil Lintner. 

Lintner, who has written authoritative books on Burma and North Korea, said: ‘According to exclusive information I have received, one of two major Burmese munitions factories located near the small town of Minhla, on the west bank of the Irrawaddy River, south of Minbu in Magway Division, is involved in the production of sophisticated Scud-type missiles’.

Lintner, who has just published a paper on his findings on the Hong Kong-based media website, Asia Pacific Media Services, told Mizzima that North Korean experts are reportedly assisting Burma’s military technicians in the top-secret project. 

Scud missiles, a series of tactical ballistic missiles, were first developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. North Korea added Scud missiles to its arsenal more than 20 years ago, buying a series of the tactical weapons from Egypt. Later it produced its own, naming them Hwasong, and exported them to Iran and Syria. The current Hwasong-6 has a range of 700 kms with a payload of 800 kg, making it a highly effective medium-range weapon in regional conflicts.

Lintner warned: ‘A Scud-armed Burma would place its capabilities a significant notch above its Southeast Asian neighbors, which do not possess such long-range missiles, [and] could spark a regional arms race, prompting neighbouring countries such as Thailand to develop or procure their own missile arsenal’.

Lintner said reports of Burma’s missile program should be taken even more seriously than assertions that Naypyidaw is aiming to become a nuclear power, which he described as a ‘pipedream, unlikely to materialize within the foreseeable future, or ever…Burma’s program to develop Scud-type missiles should be taken more seriously’.

Lintner said reports of the missile program first surfaced in 2010 in a WikiLeaks disclosure of the text of a cable sent to Washington by the US Embassy in Rangoon on August 27, 2004. 

One of the US Embassy’s sources claimed that North Korean workers were assembling surface-to-air missiles at ‘a military site in Magway Division’ where a ‘concrete-reinforced underground facility’ was also under construction. The source told the embassy that ‘he had seen a large barge carrying a reinforced steel bar of a diameter that suggested a project larger than a factory’.

The construction of the armaments factory partially underground made its purpose difficult to identify from the air, said Lintner—adding that his sources report the two factories are ‘now churning out more advanced weapons, including Scud-type missiles, than the country has to date’.

Lintner said it is ‘now clear that the site referred to in the embassy cable is Ka Pa Sa 10, situated near Konegyi village in Minhla Township. Construction of the site began in 1993, but has only recently been completed. 

‘The site reportedly covers 6,000 acres (2,428 hectares) and, according to a source who used to work at the facility, the aim is to produce surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and air-to-air missiles. 

‘The North Koreans working at the site reportedly first entered Burma discreetly by road from China. They were met at the border and then brought to Minhla by officers from Burma’s Defense Production Directorate, known as ka ka htone, according to the source’. 

Between 600 and 900 army technicians and other military personnel are currently based at Ka Pa Sa 10, said Lintner. ‘Initially Russian and Chinese technicians also took part in the facility’s construction, but they appear to have since left and been replaced with North Korean experts’.

The second Minhla Township armaments factory is spread over 100,000 acres near Malun village, Lintner said, adding his source told him that ‘the somewhat older factory employs 900 engineers and other military personnel and produces 60mm, 81mm and 120mm mortars and 105mm artillery pieces’. 

The source told Lintner that the complex also includes a huge firing range where heavy weapons, including artillery and rockets, are tested: ‘According to the source, Singapore, as a small island country which does not have enough space for such testing, paid for the construction of the firing range. Weapons are also brought from Singapore and tested at the site.’

Lintner said that so far ‘there are no reports to suggest that Minhla’s two Ka Pa Sa facilities are involved in Burma’s nascent, clandestine and highly debatable nuclear program. Nuclear research is reportedly carried out at Myaing to the north of Pakokku, which is also in Magwe (or Magway) Division but far from the Minhla facilities. 

Still, North Korean involvement in Ka Pa Sa 2 may be cause for international concern—even for Burma’s traditional military partner, China. Following the massive shipments in the 1990s and early 2000s, it appears that Chinese deliveries of military equipment have waned significantly’, Lintner said.