How US Got Front-Row Seat to North Korea’s Botched Satellite Launch

When North Korea tried to put a new spy satellite into space on Monday, an American reconnaissance plane designed for missile telemetry was already standing by to gather the ballistic data.

GPS signals collected by the aircraft-tracking service Flightradar24 put a RC-135S Cobra Ball—one of only three in the U.S. Air Force’s active inventory—in international airspace in the Yellow Sea, between China and the Korean Peninsula.

About 20 hours earlier, Pyongyang had issued navigational warnings for possible rocket debris falling in the Yellow Sea and the Philippine Sea in a launch window lasting until June 3.

North Korea’s rocket lifted off on day one. At launch time at 10:43 p.m. local time, or 13:43 Coordinated Universal Time, the Cobra Ball crew—pilots, navigator, electronic warfare officers, systems engineers and mission specialists—had been waiting at least 90 minutes.

The Boeing-built plane is a “measurement and signature intelligence” collector, capable of observing ballistic missile flights at long range. The U.S. Air Force says the Cobra Ball “flies Joint Chiefs of Staff-directed missions of national priority,” and its telemetry recordings help develop “U.S. strategic defense and theater missile defense concepts.”

The launch from Tongchang-ri, 70 miles northwest of Pyongyang, was brief. A Japanese television crew dispatched to China’s northwestern Liaoning province, near the North Korean border, captured the malfunctioning rocket exploding in midair.

The Cobra Ball left the area about 90 minutes later, according to flight logs, concluding its six-hour mission by returning to Kadena Air Base on Japan’s Okinawa island.

The Japanese government issued a missile alert for residents in southwestern Okinawa prefecture but lifted it less than 20 minutes later. Its prime minister’s office said the North Korean rocket “disappeared over the Yellow Sea and did not reach outer space.”

Its assessment matched that of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, which said “numerous pieces of debris” splashed into its western seas following an apparent self-destruct order.

The U.S. and the two defense treaty allies have used a real-time data-sharing mechanism since December to track North Korean missiles. Washington, Tokyo and Seoul all condemned Pyongyang for using ballistic missile technology prohibited by U.N. Security Council resolutions.

North Korea blamed the failure to launch the Malligyong-1-1 satellite on a new engine propelled by liquid oxygen and rocket fuel. The following day, Kim Jong Un told his country’s top missile scientists that putting another reconnaissance satellite into orbit was “a pressing task that has a direct bearing on our state’s security.”

In November, North Korea launched its first spy satellite, the Malligyong-1, on the back of its own Chollima-1 launch vehicle following two abortive attempts in May and August.

That Pyongyang did not name the rocket used on May 27, subject matter experts say, suggests it may have been an import—likely from Russia, whose leader President Vladimir Putin pledged last fall to support Kim’s space ambitions.

Amid signs of launch preparations last weekend, flight-tracking data showed the same Cobra Ball conducting a five-hour sortie in the Yellow Sea on May 25 and a 13-hour sortie the next day, when it did nearly 20 laps of the waters before returning to Kadena Air Base in Japan.

The Air Force says it has a range of 3,900 miles, without any aerial refueling.

The U.S. Defense Department typically declines to comment on specific operations and did not offer any further assessments of Monday’s launch. The Pentagon said previously that U.S. forces would operate wherever international law allows.

North Korea’s embassy in Beijing did not return multiple requests seeking comment.

On Friday, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency published a direct complaint about another U.S. aircraft, an RC-135U Combat Sent electronic intelligence plane, which it accused of “air espionage” near North Korea’s southern border this week.

The Combat Sent, which carries “a minimum of 10 electronic warfare officers,” identifies and collects foreign military radar signals for analysis by “the joint warfighting and intelligence communities,” the U.S. Air Force says.

Flights logs on May 29 showed a Combat Sent from Kadena Air Base using South Korean airspace to sweep the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone for about two hours.

“RC-135U, which the U.S. claims has only two, is known to be a state-level strategic reconnaissance aircraft with function and mission to report real-time espionage information to the U.S. president and secretary of defense and other dignitaries,” the state-run KCNA said.

“This clearly proves that such air espionage has been organized and perpetrated under the directions of top executives of the U.S. administration.

“The U.S. and other hostile forces are bound to meet unforeseen disaster for their bluffing and reckless espionage,” the report added.

The Combat Sent and the Cobra Ball were first flown in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively. They are part of an RC-135 family that is expected to fulfill the U.S. Air Force’s operational needs through at least 2040.