Long thread about my, rather inconclusive, attempts to make sense of Saudi Arabia's golden missile model box. 1/12

In 2013, Saudi Arabia published a tiny picture of three golden missile models being presented to the country's deputy defense minister. The one on the left depicts a DF-3 which is well known to be operated by KSA. The two other types, however, are a bit of a mystery. 2/12

The first step was to enlarge the image four-fold using Topaz Gigapixel, an AI-powered image enlargement software that creates a much clearer image than regular upscaling. 3/12

The missiles on the right and in the middle seem to have very similar dimensions and potentially only differ in the shape and dimensions of the re-entry vehicle. Surprisingly, the missile in the middle appears to have some sort of triconic RV. 4/12

At first, I wondered whether this might have been an artefact of the upscaling technique but looking at the image scaled up using Photoshop, I do think there is an angle variation. 5/12

The missile on the right does bear some resemblance to either a Scud or a Nodong-based system. 6/12

Pakistan has a well-known security relationship with Pakistan and in 1999, the Saudi defense minister toured the Kahuta plant at which Pakistan's Nodong-based Ghauri was produced. So the Ghauri would be a natural candidate. 7/12 https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/10/world/saudi-s-visit-to-arms-site-in-pakistan-worries-us.html

However, assuming the models are to scale, the missile on the right might just be a little bit too short for a Nodong-based system. Also, Pakistan is not known to produce Ghauris with pointy triconic reentry vehicles. 8/12

Using fSpy, a Blender plugin that allows you to determine a photograph's perspective and import it into blender, I reconstruced the box and the missiles inside. 9/12

And here are the models, compared to a standard Nodong/Ghauri (which might be a match) and a triconic North Korean Nodong (which seems very different) 10/12

Of course, there are lots of caveats. We don't know for sure whether the missiles models are true to scale and how accurate they are. Upscaling of the picture might come with its own problems. So it's a bit of tea-leaf reading. 11/12

Any comments and/or alternative explanations are highly appreciated! 12/12