North Korea appears to be converting a large cargo plane into an airborne warning system for use during missile tests or to help detect enemy missiles in a crisis, newly released expert findings show.

An Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane has recently appeared next to a maintenance hangar at Pyongyang International Airport with a large object newly affixed to the top of its fuselage, according to analysis of satellite imagery by Decker Eveleth, graduate research assistant at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Eveleth concluded that the object is possibly a mount for a rotodome