Lewis, an arms control policy expert who heads his university’s East Asia Nonproliferation Program, said a wealth of evidence proves Kim Jong-un’s regime took video of a previous, failed launch of the Hwasong-17, then stapled over that failure with the launch of a previously successful, smaller missile. He and his team determined that pictures taken by satellite image provider Planet showed a March 16 image of the field used in the March 24 video with burn scars on the landscape, where March 24 satellite images didn’t have any evidence of a deformed landscape that should come from a missile launch.

The video also did not appear to show acceleration like the Hwasong-17 should be capable of. Researchers further said the video seemed to be compiled of two different launches. All this is to say that the monster missile likely “went kablooey” on an earlier test launch, according to Lewis.

“The simplest answer is they launched the big one on March 16,” the arms control policy expert told the podcast. “They filmed it… but it blew up, and they couldn’t announce it.” It’s still unknown where the second, smaller missile was launched from.