NBC News asked U.S. government experts and independent military analysts, in the U.S. and overseas, to examine high-resolution images of the Musudan medium-range missile and the ICBM, known as the Hwasong-13, taken at the July 27 military parade.
The consensus: The displayed missiles were built for show, not for flight.
Schiller, who wrote a detailed report questioning advances in North Korea’s missile program last year, said that images were just as unrealistic as those he saw when the Hwasong-13 made its debut in at an earlier parade in April 2012.
For example, he noted, there was no evidence on the rear of the Hwasong-13 of retro rockets necessary to separate the stages – critical if an ICBM is to reach sub-orbital space and strike distant targets.
Schiller also said varied features on the rockets – such differing placement of small guidance nozzles and hatches – are telling. They make him believe that these are not even training "simulators" but "crude fakes."
Schiller said the North also seems to be trying to inflate the number of Hwasong-13s it claims to possess.
"I can tell that on the mock-ups, they simply changed the markings and serial numbers from last year's parade to make it look like they have more missiles," he said.
James Oberg, an NBC News space and missile expert who traveled to North Korea in April 2012 to observe the satellite launch that ended in failure, pointed to another discrepancy that would make the missiles less airworthy -- "undulating skin" near the warhead on one.
"Upper-stage missile skin has got to be really smooth, or else it sets off high-speed turbulent air flow that can both heat the region – and the hardware inside it – and also create localized drag effects that can pull the missile far off attitude (direction), or even pull it sideways and thus lead to loss of control and disintegration," he said.