Are Some of North Korea's Long-Range Missiles Fakes?

gbrumfiel writes "North Korea has not been shy in announcing plans to destroy the United States, but questions remain over whether it has the nukes or the missiles to do so. Now NPR reports on open-source intelligence showing that one of the North's most 'advanced' weapons might actually be a decoy. Six KN-08 missiles were paraded last year, but each showed differences in the way they were assembled. Is it all a bluff? Or are the missiles part of a real program?"

Comments

Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem solved!

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

From orbit, I presume?

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[kthreadd]

Problem solved!

So just to be clear. Them threatening to nuke us, bad. Us nuking them just to be sure, good. OK?

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Lumpy]

Yes. Because we would use neutron bombs that simply kill everyone and the fallout dissipates rapidly so we don't get any after effects. and if we air burst them all no nuclear winter.

It's a WIN-WIN!

Well except for some of china, south korea, and japan.... sorry guys....

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

From orbit, I presume?

Sharks are standing by, waiting for your call.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this may not be popular but when someone threatens you and you strike out at them it's a whole different ball game then if you just strike out at someone or threaten them just to make yourself look tough. This is like the question of the death penalty. Some try to make it seem hypocritical that you kill someone to show that killing someone is wrong. No, you're killing someone for killing someone else without justification. It's not like you're taking some random guy off the street and throwing him in front of a firing squad. It's a simple cause and effect situation.

I don't think the North Koreans are going to do things either way and certainly wouldn't think the use of arms against them is warranted at this time but they are trying to raise the ire of just about everyone around them.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

North Korea barely has electricity, they certainly aren't a threat. A small group of rednecks with shotguns could probably take on their entire military.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Rlindstr]

From orbit, I presume?

That would be the only way to be sure...

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Rlindstr]

Do they have fricking laser beams?

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Rlindstr]

North Korea barely has electricity, they certainly aren't a threat. A small group of rednecks with shotguns could probably take on their entire military.

I'm unsure how many rednecks would be a 'small group'. Could you translate that into how many 'pickup trucks filled with rednecks' that would be? Thanks!

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[TWiTfan]

They have a well-trained modern military with over 1.2 million well-armed soldiers massed along the border (using pretty modern Chinese armour, vehicles, and weapons). On the other side, you have some 600,000 shitty South Korean soldiers who would probably drop their guns and run at the first sign of attack and about 30,000 U.S. soldiers who would probably be quickly evacuated out in the event of war. At best South Korea might be able to stall a Northern attack long enough to bring in some air support from the U.S. and MAYBE hold Seoul. But even that is unlikely.

Make no mistake about it, the North is a very real threat to South Korea. And don't think for a second that 30,000 U.S. soldiers in the DMZ are even going to try to fight 1.1 million North Koreans. When I was stationed there, they basically told us that we were toast is the North ever decided to attack. And that was back in the 80's, when we had even more soldiers there than we do now.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Well my argument against the death penalty is that there is a chance that you could be wrong and the person didn't actually do the crime + you're only as bad as the person committing the crime if you react in the same way they have acted.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[LordLimecat]

I think you missed the part where theyre holding Seoul hostage, as well as sizable portions of their population.

All the history books / classes trumpet the whole "US Defender of Freedom" thing regarding WW2, because we helped stop the holocaust. Yet we have the same sorts of concentration camps / ghettos as in WW2, in North Korea right now. You dont think thats something worth considering war for?

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[NatasRevol]

Given that they might have only fake weapons, about 4 pickup trucks.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[StrangeBrew]

I had to ask myself: Why Sharks? Why not honey badgers? It didn't take long to figure out though that, unlike the sharks, honey badgers wouldn't wait for your call. They don't give a shit, they'd just launch the missiles to see what happens next.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[socode]

You argument would speak against any punishment, with the death penalty just being the most final case. After all, if I'm innocent, I'm not exactly going to be happy to have been imprisoned for 20 years.

And by your logic on an execution being as bad as e.g. murder, do you think that people who illegally imprison others shouldn't be subjected to jail terms, or fraudsters should never be fined?

Re: Let's nuke them to be sure

[interval1066]

Yes. Sorry gi, but you were a hostage.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[dryeo]

Actually it is mostly American history books that spread the "US Defender of Freedom" propaganda. Others record that America declared war on Germany for the simple reason that Germany had already declared war on America after America had sat out a couple of years of war so they could make money.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[dragonsomnolent]

Ok, let's look at this more closely, because you bring up very good and valid points. While it's true, if you are wrongly incarcerated you won't be happy about it, however, there are things which can be done to repay you for that injustice (financial compensation, and I know it may never be enough to make up for you losing your freedom). What reparations can you make to a man who you executed? He's dead, his body will no longer function, ever, you can't give him anything to make him come back to life or to make up for killing him. I won't say that execution is just as bad as murder, because I don't think it is (though I do think it somewhat barbaric).

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Wars are rarely about human rights... In fact the opposite could be argued. Like anything 'political' follow the money. As that is what usually starts them.

We knew pretty early on about the holocaust. Germany was trying to 'sell' its jews to us (and even those from the countries it conquered). We knew from that and from people who escaped, defected, or just saw it go down. It was not until we got in there that we knew the scale of it.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah? Well I did contract work for the US DoD in South Korea back in '03 and the North was a bit of a running joke.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[nhat11]

Or railguns?

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[interkin3tic]

Playing devil's advocate: there are a lot more of us (us here being everyone North Korea has threatened) than there are North Koreans. And North Korea is already killing North Korea. They're just doing it very slowly and painfully. If I'm ever put into a North Korean hard labor camp, I'd probably quickly be praying someone would nuke North Korea even if I'm in it at that moment.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[chronoglass]

I had to ask myself: Why Sharks? Why not honey badgers? It didn't take long to figure out though that, unlike the sharks, honey badgers wouldn't wait for your call. They don't give a shit, they'd just launch the missiles and go eat a snake, they don't give a shit what happens next.

FTFY

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[phantomfive]

On the other side, you have some 600,000 shitty South Korean soldiers who would probably drop their guns and run

The South Korean soldiers I've known would absolutely not do this. They are tough. They would not win against the North alone, but they absolutely would sacrifice themselves to hold off until the US arrives from the south (where the US military bases are).

Also, your idea of military strategy is wrong. 1.1million infantry cannot do anything without support, they will be mowed down like grass. Look at the battle of Somme for an example of what happens when you try to cross a No-Man's-Land with overwhelming numbers of infantry.

North Korea has the capability to inflict millions of civilian casualties on South Korea, on the first day of battle due to the poor strategic location of Seoul, but they won't win a conventional war.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[LordLimecat]

Im aware of that, I was pointing out the hypocrisy of it all.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[CAIMLAS]

You're thinking in the context of mass attacks. That isn't going to happen.

The NK DMZ is 2.5 miles wide. It has no easy passage for vehicles and directly passing through the forest would be all but impossible. Reaching the other side, on foot - if you avoid being eaten or otherwise killed by wildlife or AP mines - would instantly result in being turned into hamburger and/or fine mist by a mix of automated turrets, mortars, etc. Any massing of troops in the forest, as detected by airborne infrared sensors, would immediately result in shelling of the area.

So really, a land passage isn't exactly tenable. There are small passages through these jungles and those are likewise guarded. They'd get shelled out within seconds of any indication of a convoy rolling down the road. (I don't care if they are well trained soldiers, they've got to either walk or ride vehicles, and it takes a long time to move even a fraction of a million people, well trained or not.)

So really, the only tenable way for NK to get actual troops and their associated Chinese vehicles to SK is by sea or air. How well do you think that will work?

Here's a hint: NK uses 1950s-1970s Soviet technology for pretty much everything they do that's "advanced". That means most of what they do is one-off and poorly assembled; they are easily 70 years behind the West at this point in basic industrialization, and they're even further behind if you consider what they are able to produce domestically. NK would almost instantly fall apart internally if they expended the time, energy, and resources to engage in a war - in the matter of days, people would be dying of starvation in high numbers. Posturing alone is likely too much for them to sustain for long.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[kilfarsnar]

All the history books / classes trumpet the whole "US Defender of Freedom" thing regarding WW2, because we helped stop the holocaust. Yet we have the same sorts of concentration camps / ghettos as in WW2, in North Korea right now. You dont think thats something worth considering war for?

Stopping the Holocaust was not really the reason the US entered the war. The public reason was that we were attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. The real reasons are up for debate. But this is a good object lesson in the use of history classes to reinforce the idea that America = Awesome. Unfortunately history is as often about making one's country look good as relating what really happened way back when.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[poity]

I have a feeling that N.Korean soldiers would be more likely to drop their weapons and look for menial jobs around Seoul that pay 20x better than soldiering for the Kims.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[aceboomblain]

While there may be things that *can* be done for you in cases where you were wrongly incarcerated, do they ever happen? I think the only reparation you are going to get in the US is that you won't be in debt for the room and board for the last 10 years.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[interval1066]

On the other side, you have some 600,000 shitty South Korean soldiers who would probably drop their guns and run at the first sign of attack...

Oh, I didn't see this "comment". You are DEAD WRONG. 1) They aren't shitty. 2) They are all fully cognizant of the fact that they are there to defend their country. I've met a few of these men (spent time in Asia, including S. Korea), do not confuse S. Korea with the S. Vietnam of the 60's. Seoul is not the Saigon of the Vietnam era, rife with graft & corruption, and petty dictators propped up by a paranoid Lyndon Johnson. S. Korea is a modern society with a petty but dangerous neighbor to the north, and is fully prepared to defend itself. They have to, the have no where else to go. Your opinion is petty and uneducated bias.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[interval1066]

EXACTLY.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[bancho]

You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead. So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a girlfriend like that once.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US you'd have ample grounds to sue for wrongful imprisonment.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[saider]

Many states will compensate you for the term, to the tune of around $50k per year.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[saider]

And it happens often enough that there are rules about how much you get based on things like your education level, age when you went in, etc.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Nyder]

Problem solved!

So just to be clear. Them threatening to nuke us, bad. Us nuking them just to be sure, good. OK?

Yes, When The USA does something, it's good (like torturing prisoners, or overthrowing nations), but when someone else does it, it's bad, wrong & evil.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[dwye]

I was born, raised, and educated in the USA, and I never heard this "U.S. Defender of Freedom" thing. We stayed out of WWII because large portions of the US wanted to avoid a repeat of WWI, just as the Oxford Student Debating Society solemnly resolved that there was no reason whatsoever to die for King Or Country just a year or two before Churchill and Co. shamed poor Chamberlain into demanding that Germany not invade Poland or suffer Britain's (and France's) wrath. After Japan attacked, we might have known that Germany needed to be included in the war but Germany was nice enough to declare war on us, before we had to try to convince Congress to declare war on a previously non-belligerent power just because we didn't like them.

We did not declare war on the Vichy regime because we thought that nominal neutrality might work better (and we decided to treat them as if they were the Ghetto Councils that the Nazis set up before they liquidated the Ghettos, ie in charge like Holly Genarro in Die Hard). We "knew" about the death camps, but no one believed the reports because they were made by commy-symps and Jews, and the idea of killing your best and smartest workers was too absurd, just as the Red Cross was notified of the Katryn Forest massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets, but they didn't believe it because the Germans reported it.

Face it, pre-emptive war, even against a righteous target, has lost a bit of its luster in the last decade. If the USA *did* decide to do something about NK, large portions of the world, including Europe, would complain about US Cowboy Diplomacy and Warmongering.

BTW, would Poland have objected so much if the Germans asked them to join in a crusade against the Godless Communists on their Eastern border, instead of what happened?

Re: Let's nuke them to be sure

[Gilmoure]

She fit in a suitcase? Was she of high caliber?

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[aceboomblain]

OK, 27 states do provide varying levels of compensation.
Source: Innocence Project Fact Sheet.
I live in one of the 23 states that do not provide any compensation for the wrongly convicted.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Solandri]

The big difference between North Korea and Nazi Germany is that North Korea's problems and human rights violations are all internal (aside from a few bombings and assassination attempts). Germany made their behavior an international matter by invading neighboring countries.

There's an unstated rule that what happens in your country is your business. Other members of the international community may complain about what you do inside your own borders, but they'll almost never take action based on it. Most of the international community supported the first Gulf War because Iraq invaded Kuwait. Most did not support the second Gulf War because it was a drastic intervention on the internal affairs of Iraq, even if S. Hussein was a psychopathic dictator who occasionally gassed his own citizens. The U.S. tried to paint it as an international matter by saying the threat of using WMDs on other countries was there. But without solid evidence to back it up, people weren't buying it.

I think most people see the right to self-governance as sacrosanct, even if it's clearly being abused by those in power. Because once you cross that line and say it's ok to invade another country for reasons that are internal to that country, you lose the moral high ground if someone invades your country. All the invader have to do is cite some sorts of problems or human rights violations within your country to justify their invasion, and they're treating you by your own standards.

If North Korea invades South Korea or attacks Japan, the U.S. will be there in a heartbeat to drive them back (and probably then some). But as long as North Korea's abuses remain internal, it's going to take a lot before the U.S. (or the international community for that matter) decides to intervene.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Rich0]

I was just reading an article the other day about people in states where there is no compensation, where the conviction still shows up on your record, and where employment for those wrongfully convicted is almost impossible as a result.

These people don't want $50k/yr for lost time - they want their records cleared. Heaven forbid that somebody proven innocent by DNA evidence have a clean record!

$50k/yr is the least we should be doing for them - it should probably be closer to $150k/yr. It isn't like we should be locking up that many people wrongfully that we can't afford it - if we are then the reparations are the least of our problems.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[GoogleShill]

Ample grounds? Unless a police officer or prosecutor fabricated or blatantly withheld evidence, there is nothing you can do but accept that period of your life was wasted and that your arrest record will haunt you for the rest of your life.

Simply beating a case in an appeal doesn't automatically make you a victim of false imprisonment.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[dcw3]

And can either of you counter what those history books state with evidence to the contrary?

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[domatic]

At least 4 invasion tunnels.....that the powers that be admit to, have been found and it is widely thought they have some x number of tunnels that haven't been detected. The tunnels in question were large enough to accomodate armor and mobile artillery.

They could plausibly dump at least a division well behind the DMZ if they've managed to keep even two or three tunnels undetected and usable. This too can be countered by additional defensive rings further back from the DMZ but still it would add to the North's ability to make one hell of a mess before they get their teeth kicked in.

Though come to think of it, I wouldn't put it past us and the SK's to keep quiet about a few tunnels quiet then mining the holy bejezus out of them with some big dialed in arty to boot.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[qbast]

BTW, would Poland have objected so much if the Germans asked them to join in a crusade against the Godless Communists on their Eastern border, instead of what happened?

Actually Ribbentrop proposed that Poland joins anti-soviet pact during meeting with ambassador Lipski on 24 Oct 1938 . It was of course declined.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Comrade Ogilvy]

The biggest problem is South Korea would complain about the US precipitating a war, for good reason. They dislike the North Korean gov't, of course, but NK is quite capable of flattening half of Seoul with conventional weapons.

This is a situation where the US just needs to be a calm adult and let South Korea take the lead.

In the long game, continued NK belligerence as we have seen over the last decade will eventually provoke Japan to build a nuclear deterrence. The threat of that expensive future nuclear arms is what is going to get China to talk some sense into NK...eventually. In the short term, China has incentive to do nothing. In the long term, China is probably more worried about being boxed in a nuclear Japan and a nuclear South Korea (and a nuclear India) than it cares about Korea.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[gadget junkie]

I think that most of the problems stem from a number of issues:

1.North Korea resolutely states that what it has with south Korea is an "armistice", a temporary cessation of open hostilities which can be withdrawn on a whim, NOT a peace treaty;
2. as per 1. above, it has liberally sprinkled the south of hostile acts even recently, witness the sinking of a south Korean corvette;
3. It recently tested a long range ballistic missile by sending it flying over Japan, not the most sensible thing to do;
4.Given the UN embargo, and the geography, north Korea can only survive at the whim of two countries, neither of which is south Korea and/or the USA, namely China, and to a lesser extent, Russia.

I think that the pointy heads are not wondering if the present dictator is better or worse than his forefathers, or if he is stark raving mad. Anybody here thinking that the north Korea military is NOT thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese agents? My take is that should kim jong .3 turn mad, his life expectancy could be measured in seconds.
Another issue is closely related to point 3 above: why on earth the Chinese should have allowed the north Koreans to be so openly hostile to neighbours and the USA? it will cause trouble for them sooner or later. I am already flabbergasted that the USA, in a quiet sort of way, has not gotten to the Chinese ear that they could be apt to treat North Korea as their "renegade province" [pun intended], refuse any further contact with them, and invite all the ASEAN members to a quiet dinner somewhere. the only possibility of seeing south Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines at the same table should be sufficient to give them enough fits to squeeze north Korea into getting quiet.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

North Korea resolutely states that what it has with south Korea is an "armistice", a temporary cessation of open hostilities which can be withdrawn on a whim, NOT a peace treaty;

North Korea is, for once, correct on this issue. Even South Korea and the United States accept that there has never been a peace treaty between the DPRK and the Republic of Korea.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

You're exaggerating. Based on statements by defectors even the military have insufficient food rations - only their special forces are well-equipped, trained and fed. Furthermore, the constant fuel shortages are evident from the fact that they almost never fly their military aircraft, which also means that their pilots are not well trained. Similarly, they would have difficulties with fuel for all their vehicles so whilst they have a lot of hardware, their ability to deploy them is quite limited. And obviously China would completely stop supplying them with fuel and other resources if they were to indeed launch an offensive. China prefers the status quo and knows that any military action by NK would result in more US military at their doorstep.

The number of US troops in the DMZ is not a very good indicator of military strength anymore with modern weapons systems.

What I consider perplexing is that you think that the SK soldiers are shitty. I've visited the DMZ as a tourist which of course means a lot less interaction than you had but to me the soldiers and South Koreans in general seemed very much intent on defending their country.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[LordLimecat]

Stopping the Holocaust was not really the reason the US entered the war.

I never said it was, I said that was the common claim, explicit or implicit..

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[LordLimecat]

Germany made their behavior an international matter by invading neighboring countries.

As opposed to North Korea, which is only restrained by the knowledge that they cannot retaliate against the US if they spark a war.

What happens when they get second-strike capability? Or first strike capability?

Re: Let's nuke them to be sure

[Ol Biscuitbarrel]

I'd go for a GF who destroys people but leaves buildings standing. Think of all the free office supplies! And the sex.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[cold fjord]

Others record that America declared war on Germany for the simple reason that Germany had already declared war on America after America had sat out a couple of years of war so they could make money.

That is simply false. The United States stayed out of the war because it was deeply isolationist and anti-war at the time (watch 23:08 to 25:13), and wasn't party to any of the treaties that resulted in the war. (Interesting, isn't it? Many in Europe complain that the US didn't enter WW2 soon enough, but now complain when the US gets involved in the conflicts of today. A simple question of whose ox is being gored? )

Look at the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. The US gave the UK 50 warships, destroyers, in return for basing rights. What do you think that was worth?

What's a little debt between friends?

"In a nutshell, everything we got from America in World War II was free," says economic historian Professor Mark Harrison, of Warwick University.

"The loan was really to help Britain through the consequences of post-war adjustment, rather than the war itself. This position was different from World War I, where money was lent for the war effort itself."

Britain had spent a great deal of money at the beginning of the war, under the US cash-and-carry scheme, which saw straight payments for materiel. There was also trading of territory for equipment on terms that have attracted much criticism in the years since. By 1941, Britain was in a parlous financial state and Lend-Lease was eventually introduced.

The post-war loan was part-driven by the Americans' termination of the scheme. Under the programme, the US had effectively donated equipment for the war effort, but anything left over in Britain at the end of hostilities and still needed would have to be paid for.

But the price would please a bargain hunter - the US only wanted one-tenth of the production cost of the equipment and would lend the money to pay for it. . .

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[cold fjord]

Assuming it is the same question in your mind, maybe this.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[dryeo]

My apologies, internet postings are easy to misinterpret.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't say that execution is just as bad as murder, because I don't think it is (though I do think it somewhat barbaric).

A case can be made that a lawful execution is worse than murder.

A murderer might

a) kill in the heat of passion
b) kill somebody really, really "asking for it"
c) have had a bad life
d) have screwed up wiring

That said, what is the excuse of a prosperous nation? So prosperous that it almost invariably costs us more to argue about killing a guy than it does just to feed/house him in prison until he dies.

A murderer can have excuses. A nation... not so much. Keep in mind, how we treat the least among us says a lot about us. Also, however crappy our lives can get, it would be nice to set the bar a little higher than death row.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[c0lo]

Can they be 3D-printed?

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[cold fjord]

Maybe, so long as they don't mind their parents, brothers/sisters/wife, and children going to a prison camp where they are unlikely to emerge alive.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[Coren22]

There are many cases in the US where people have been released from prison due to new evidence (usually DNA) proving that they didn't commit the crime. Those people then go on to sue for wrongful imprisonment and generally get pretty good payouts. Use your Google-fu if you need examples, they do happen.

Re:Let's nuke them to be sure

[GoogleShill]

Those aren't wrongful imprisonment lawsuits, they are legislatively-defined reparations for certain types of exonerations. Only about half of the states have anything like that and the ones that do have very strict rules behind them. For example, if you had a prior conviction or you pleaded guilty to the charge to avoid the death penalty, you won't get anything.

For more information (as posted somewhere else on this thread), see: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Compensating_The_Wrongly_Convicted.php

Maybe my google-fu isn't as good as yours, but I certainly can't find many cases at all where any government entity was found guilty of false imprisonment. There are plenty of civil actions against people for submitting false evidence to get someone locked up, but the police and prosecutors are not at fault there.

Duh

[AmiMoJo]

Obviously the ones they parade are just shells. Do you think the US/USSR paraded armed nuclear missiles down the streets back in the day?

Re: Duh

[peragrin]

Damn straight they did. And every communist lived in peace with their neighbors.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

I am shocked, well not that shocked.

Re:Duh

[MachineShedFred]

The thing is, it isn't just the shells. There are major differences between what was paraded around, like the length of stage assemblies, and where fuel valves are.

They could be iterative design mockups for producing the real thing, or it could be a massive display of horseshit for propaganda.

Re:Duh

[harvey the nerd]

No doubt an analysis of the tires in the pictures would show that each "rocket" weighs 200-300 kg....

Re:Duh

[Charliemopps]

They could be iterative design mockups for producing the real thing, or it could be a massive display of horseshit for propaganda.

Or... what's more likely... both.

Re:Duh

[Sockatume]

Unfueled nuclear missiles with no payload, yes. They're light, safe and easy to transport.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt an analysis of the tires in the pictures would show that each "rocket" weighs 200-300 kg....

Wat? Wat? Are you say my missiles are fat? That's it, now you on my list too. I am writing you name on a missile right now myself.

Re: Duh

[Sponge Bath]

That's nice. I like a happy ending.

Re:Duh

[Richard_at_work]

I'd say that if these were the real things, they are training rounds - versions of the weapon designed to be of the right weight, size and bulk of the original, but have nothing at all to do with actually being able to be used as a real weapon.

Every military has them for every weapon they have in their stock - there are training rounds for nuclear warheads, cruise missiles and even Trident ICBMs.

The crews have to be taught how to handle the weapons, and you do not do that on a live round.

Re:Duh

[IndustrialComplex]

What do we do with prototype units in the US?

We clean them up, paint them, and turn them into static displays for putting outside of VFWs.

Of course the missiles used in a parade are going to vary, it is a huge waste (and security risk) to have your actual assets all placed in one location and out in the open. This isn't surprising at all.

Re:Duh

[Big Hairy Ian]

Also obviously they are parading a variety of missiles which may have different purposes (Nuclear, Satellite, Conventional etc.)

Re:Duh

[Hentes]

Or decoys misdirecting attention from the real ones.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they're not always absent of payload. Absent of fuel: Topic-M has a solid propellant..

I'm sure this is well known among the people who should know. Posting as anom as I simply don't want my co-workers to know about my previous employer.

Re:Duh

[Hadlock]

There were 13 iterations of the Saturn V, they didn't even have the same paint job, let alone configuration. The first stage had anywhere between 7 and 12 helium tanks inside of the kerosene tank depending on the version. About the only similarity between each rocket was the diameter of the last stage, where it met with the Apollo capsule. Each engine was different, custom built.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm voting on neither. I suspect everything is from Rent-A-Center-China.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

In Korean?

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were just a massive display of horseshit for propaganda, you'd imagine they would pay a little more attention to believability since they wouldn't have to spend so much time on actual rocket science.

Re:Duh

[MMC Monster]

They're hand made. You should expect some varience.

Sort of like how when you buy a wooden table they have a clause that there are natural knots in the wood that may effect the grain of the table.

In the same way, these missiles are obviously made of wood.

Re:Duh

[berashith]

made of wood? did you build a bridge out of them to find out?

Re:Duh

[Richy_T]

Hand-made because they care about quality.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

So, then they weigh the same as a duck?

Re:Duh

[Frosty Piss]

made of wood? did you build a bridge out of them to find out?

When you pull your head out of your ass, take nore of the loud "WHOOOOOSHING" sound...

Re:Duh

[mkiwi]

They could be iterative design mockups for producing the real thing, or it could be a massive display of horseshit for propaganda.

Hey, don't knock Kim Jong-Un's gangnam style!

Re:Duh

[Frosty Piss]

http://translate.google.com/#auto/ko/Wat%3F%20Wat%3F%20Are%20you%20say%20my%20missiles%20are%20fat%3F%20That's%20it%2C%20now%20you%20on%20my%20list%20too.%20I%20am%20writing%20you%20name%20on%20a%20missile%20right%20now%20myself.

Re:Duh

[berashith]

you really cant figure out that such an absurd response isnt serious? I guess all those whoosing noises in your like make it hard to think.

your response was supposed to be " cant you also build a bridge out of stone? "

Re: Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for invasion of Hungary. And Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. And sino-soviet tensions that almost escalated into a war.
Yes, totally peaceful life full of harmony between brotherly nations

Re: Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, except for those kurtufles in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Re: Duh

[cold fjord]

Damn straight they did. And every communist lived in peace with their neighbors.

It's nice that people can still believe fairytales, but not so nice when they involve the "peaceful" nature of communism. There is a little history you left out, such as:

The Soviet suppression of the workers strike in East Germany in 1953, the Soviet invasion to put down the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush the "Prague Spring - Socialism with a Human Face," and the Soviet invasion of communist Afghanistan.

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

On December 27, 1979, under cover of an ongoing Soviet military buildup, heavily-armed elements of a Soviet airborne brigade were airlifted into Kabul, Afghanistan, to violently overthrow the regime of President Hafizollah Amin. Within hours after the beginning of this Trojan Horse-type operation, Soviet troops had overwhelmed the elite presidential guard, captured Amin, executed him along with several members of his family for crimes against the people and seized control of the capital.

Within days Soviet armor columns were fanning out across Afghani stan to occupy major population centers, airbases and strategic lines of com munication.

Uprising in East Germany, 1953 ; In Eastern Germany, 1953 Uprising Is Remembered
The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents
Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968

Added bonus: 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état

The Chinese-Soviet border war of 1969 very neary went nuclear:

The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, 1969: U.S. Reactions and Diplomatic Maneuvers

A State Department memorandum of conversation, published here for the first time, recounts one of the more extraordinary moments in Cold War history--a KGB officer's query about the U.S. reaction to a hypothetical Soviet attack on Chinese nuclear weapons facilities.

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969

The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

He said Soviet diplomats warned Washington of Moscow's plans "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer," with a nuclear strike, asking the US to remain neutral.

But, he says, Washington told Moscow the United States would not stand idly by but launch its own nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if it attacked China, loosing nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities. The threat worked, he added, and made Moscow think twice, while forcing the two countries to regulate their border dispute at the negotiating table

Re:Duh

[Dahamma]

Well, considering the Saturn V program's yearly budget (in today's dollars) was more than North Korea's entire yearly military budget, if they want to try to build a series of one-off custom missiles instead of mass producing them, we should highly encourage that...

Re: Duh

[Firethorn]

It's nice that people can still believe fairytales, but not so nice when they involve the "peaceful" nature of communism. There is a little history you left out, such as:

I think your sarcasm detector is broken. Peragrin's post pegged mine.

Re: Duh

[spitzak]

Whooosh!!!!!

Re:Duh

[Solandri]

I don't recall ever seeing a U.S. missile in a parade. Can someone point out where these are? It might be cool to see, considering they're just suborbital rockets.

Re:Duh

[dwye]

No, he dunked them to see if they were witches, and they floated, proving that they were really geese.

Or some such Holy Grail-ish nonsense.

Re:Duh

[Rich0]

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Could you imagine ranks of soldiers, tanks, and missiles parading down Pennsylvania Ave?

Re: Duh

[swb]

Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?

I like how hipsters can wear a Mao/Lenin/Che t-shirt and think there's some kind of cool irony involved, yet wearing a Hitler t-shirt would get you (rightly) labeled as some kind of drooling racist neanderthal.

The double standard employed is really remarkable.

Re:Duh

[Thud457]

Lovingly hand-crafted, much like V-2s.

Re:Duh

[Rich0]

The crews have to be taught how to handle the weapons, and you do not do that on a live round.

Not only that, but do you really want your supreme leader standing across the street from hundreds of tons of rocket fuel just waiting for some kind of accident to set it afire?

Training rounds likely also come in a variety of styles, from fully inert to working rockets but inert warheads (for missiles, etc). It depends on just what you're training for. But yes, I wouldn't want to be in a hanger with a bunch of people learning for the first time how to load a bomb on a plane using live ammo. The pilots aren't even supposed to touch the bombs on their planes (though they do inspect them visually and notify somebody if they see a problem).

Re: Duh

[cold fjord]

I think your sarcasm detector is broken. Peragrin's post pegged mine.

The problem is that there are still people that either believe what that post said, or something close enough that it doesn't matter. There are still communists and advocates for communism worldwide, including here on Slashdot. Even North Korea has defenders around the world. The United States itself has a number of active communist parties - Americans just don't let them anywhere near power when they understand that is who it is. (Europeans often claim that the United States has no true left despite the evidence.)

SEIU drops mask, goes full commie
Communists hijacking 'occupy wall street' movement?

Why do you think I included that last section? Even when they understand that there was a little bit of a problem with the way former communist governments acted, they hedge that "no true communist government" has ever existed, so people need to keep on trying to build communist utopias. Eventually people will forget and it will happen again. People around the world are hypervigilant over fascist parties, but communists get a pass despite their far bloodier record.

Nobody uses sarcasm, especially in writing - since it lacks the typical vocal cues, to transmit the knowledge that a particular substance is poisonous, and that if ingested it will kill you, hence my post. Until Slashdot implements the [sarcasm] tag, it is best to be direct and explicit about something so toxic that so many are drawn to like moths to a flame. Communism is a form of mind trap.

Re: Duh

[cold fjord]

See above - especially if you still have active communist parties in your country - otherwise you have a leak.

Re: Duh

[cold fjord]

There need to be t-shirts printed with this picture of Che instead of the typical one used.

Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him

Re: Duh

[spitzak]

Not sure what you are getting at.

The gp posted a lengthy article about how mean communist countries were to each other. This seems to imply he thought the ggp (who said "and every communist lived in peace with their neighbors") seriously thought communists were peaceful. I believe the ggp was trying to make a joke and in no way believed that, and the person going through the trouble to post the lengthy article trying to refute him was seriously "whooshed" by the joke and should be embarrassed.

Actually I'm a little unclear what you are trying to say, can you explain.

Re: Duh

[cold fjord]

First link should be: SEIU drops mask, goes full commie

Re: Duh

[cold fjord]

Read this post, as I suggested. If it still seems unclear, I'll see if I can provide more detail. And you save you a little work - you almost certainly have one or more genuine communist parties in your country, and communists read Slashdot.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have those.

Re: Duh

[spitzak]

You are really flailing trying to defend the fact that you cannot recognize a joke, sorry. Just realize and admit you did a stupid thing. You are obviously intelligent since you went through the work of collecting references and everything, I'll give you that.

I agree there are probably people who believe communism is a nirvana and everything is perfect. However it is OBVIOUS that the poster writing in response to "did the US and USSR use real nukes in their parades" with "Damn straight they did. And every communist lived in peace with their neighbors." is not one of them. He was making a joke, implicitly implying that the falsehood of real nukes being used in parades is equal to the falsehood of communists being peaceful with their neighbors. Get it?

I also agree that sarcasm is sometimes hard to see on the Internet. But this is not a good example. Sometimes is is pretty obvious, such as in this case.

Re: Duh

[spitzak]

Also not sure what is wrong with Slashdot, but I cannot see that other reply except by clicking on the link you gave.

Re: Duh

[cold fjord]

Believe what you will. My purpose was to provide explicit information and insight. Humor can provide insight, and serve as a power means of social criticism. The problem when dealing with communism is that the fans of communism will ignore or reject the joke, or even take it as serious when it is subtle. By the way - did you notice that post's moderation? 50% Interesting, 50% Funny. If you think that quip revealed more about the true nature of communist regimes than my post, you are a person of rare insight.

I accomplished my purpose with my post, and I hope you enjoyed the joke.

One last thing: The Soviets really did use real missiles in their parades, just without the payload. Western intelligence agencies eagerly awaited each years military parade for the purpose of intelligence gathering.

Washington Looks Back at the Cuban Missile Crisis, Part 1

Soviet R-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (NATO reporting name: SS-4) on parade in Red Square. The CIA used this photo as a reference point when identifying the deployment of this type of missile to Cuba. Photo Credit: CIA/National Security Archive.

Cheers

Re: Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Sarcasm-or-not, I'm glad that cold fjord posted that lengthy snippet about communism; my teenage son has begun spouting the argument that communism just hasn't been done properly yet (and it scares the hell out of me that he feels this way, and also that he got that crap from someone else who feels that way). I intend to forward that post to my son and I hope he reads it and begins to understand the unmitigated evil that is communism.

Thank you, cold fjord!

Re: Duh

[cold fjord]

Just a few more additions -

When Good People Do Bad Things

Political Culture with Thomas Sowell: Free Markets and Marxism
Dr. Sowell was a Marxist for a decade.

Leftists Will be Shot in the U.S. When Marxists come to power

How A Failed Commune Gave Us What Is Now Thanksgiving

RESULTS OF COMMUNISM / SOCIALISM

Reflections on Communism Twenty Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

The Divergence between Theory and Practice

Richard Pipes of Harvard University has argued that in addition to these proximate causes, the fundamental cause of the collapse “was the utopian nature of its [the regime’s] objectives.” That is to say, the Soviet system from its earliest days pursued goals that were both unrealizable and unpopular, including the attempted creation of “the new socialist man.”11 Those utopian efforts demanded a waste of resources, vast amounts of coercion and fraudulent political propaganda. Martin Malia of the University of California at Berkeley made a similar point: “Of all the reasons for the collapse of communism, the most basic is that it was an intrinsically nonviable, indeed impossible project from the beginning. However important in its genesis were the heritage of Russian backwardness and authoritarianism, or the personal ruthlessness of Lenin and Stalin, it is Marxism that was the decisive factor . . . making communism the historically unique phenomenon it was. And the perverse genius of Marxism is to present an unattainable utopia as an infallibly scientific enterprise.”

These Western assessments of the nature of communism—utopian or otherwise—have great bearing on the disputes and explanations regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus, one set of the responses to the collapse was shaped by the belief that it occurred because, as Malia and Pipes argued, the system sought to achieve utopian goals inspired by Marxism. In other words, the collapse occurred because theory and practice converged (i.e., Marxist theory compelled communist systems to pursue unattainable utopian goals). The theoretical foundation or blueprint itself was flawed, not viable, as Malia put it. Milovan Djilas, the Yugoslav communist politician who later became a critic of communist totalitarianism, also believed that “the [communist] idea itself contained the seeds of its own inglorious, future collapse. . . . Such visions may encourage us to sacrifice . . . but they are also opiates to the soul. . . . The idea dried up in proportion as the reality legitimized by it grew stronger.”13 . . . .

. . . The reasons leading to the collapse included both sets of factors: some of the ideals or theoretical propositions of Marxism were clearly adopted and zealously pursued but they had adverse, unintended consequences. For example the collectivization of agriculture retarded food production, and state controlled industrialization created a huge, inefficient bureaucracy, diminished incentives of the workers, and contributed greatly to the concentration of political power. Marx and Lenin (initially) believed that communist ideals would command broad popular support and therefore little violence or coercion will be required to implement them. They also believed that all forms of human misbehavior will “wither away” after the proletarian revolution and the seizure of the means of production. As Leszek Kolakowski put it, “Marx seems to have imagined

Re: Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Added some more content. I hope it helps. I can only imagine your distress. Good luck and God bless.

Re:Duh

[Frosty Piss]

Clearly your "joke" - such that it was - is what they call "lame" in the vernacular. My guess is that you are an overweight drone who sits on an office chair with a fart cushion all day, tapping your "wit" into the Intertubes and occasionally doing some actual work.

Here's a suggestion: Your beard? My wife (a woman, you know?) calls them "pussy beards" because they look like the hair on a woman's snatch. Personally, I think they look like a dead rat hanging from your chin.

Enjoy your Cheeto's.

Re: Duh

[spitzak]

The Soviets really did use real missiles in their parades, just without the payload.

That is exactly what the original poster was saying. The term "nuke" usually refers to the payload, and he was stating the obvious fact that they did not use missiles with payloads (and probably ones never intended to fly at all) in the parade.

If you really need to prove that the communists attacked other countries (you actually kind of limited it to only communist other countries, which is only a subset of "neighbors" and they did nasty things to other neighbors too) you can, but it still looked like spew from somebody so angry that they cannot see straight. Prefixing it with "I know the above poster is joking but some of you may not be aware of just how non-peaceful Communists really were" would have helped.

Re:Duh

[Coren22]

I don't know about missiles, but I have seen the VFW displays indicated.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=vfw+Dorsey+Road,+Glen+Burnie,+MD&hl=en&ll=39.160791,-76.677747&spn=0.002185,0.002411&sll=39.162207,-76.657303&sspn=0.00437,0.004823&t=h&hq=vfw&hnear=Dorsey+Rd,+Glen+Burnie,+Anne+Arundel,+Maryland+21061&fll=39.160922,-76.67713&fspn=0.002185,0.002411&z=19

Here's another one, not at a VFW though as far as I know:

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=175+MD-3+BUS,+Glen+Burnie,+MD&hl=en&ll=39.11729,-76.728632&spn=0.000547,0.000603&sll=55.769267,37.600496&sspn=0.017937,0.038581&oq=MD+rt+175+&t=h&hnear=175+Maryland+3+Business,+Glen+Burnie,+Maryland+21061&z=21

Not fake at all!

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news, NK news outlets are also playing this footage and claiming Mark Whalberg's face was photoshopped on to Kim Jong Un's body.

Some analysts say...

[rvw]

I just read those two lines under that nice picture.

Some analysts say the half-dozen missiles showcased at the military parade were fakes.

So the ones they showed in a parade are fakes. Now how smart do you have to be to decide to use fakes in a parade? I mean, you have maybe only two of them working, maybe only one, or maybe even six in good condition. Why take the risk that something happens while showing them off? Showing them in a parade means they are not ready to use if the US or the South attacks. (How unlikely this might be to us, they have a different perspective.) The decoys might be empty ones that will be used later. That each of them has differences only shows that they are working on them.

Re:Some analysts say...

[empties]

And some might suggest that parade day would be a good time to invade, but wooden warheads can give you a nasty splinter.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Sockatume]

The whole point of the parade was to demonstrate that they had the weapons, though. Why hold the parade just to show off obvious fakes?

"We have matched your capabilities with papier mache and toilet roll tubes. Resistance is futile."

Re:Some analysts say...

[SJHillman]

Much the same reason Iran has released videos of its super mega awesome tech (which turned out to be toys and stock movie footage)... propaganda and posturing.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment is best comment, Patton-san.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Sockatume]

Precisely.

Re:Some analysts say...

[drinkypoo]

Now how smart do you have to be to decide to use fakes in a parade?

You've gotta be pretty dumb, because the point of parading them is to show off that you have them, not that you can build models.

Why take the risk that something happens while showing them off?

If you can't manage to hold a parade without breaking a rocket, what's the chances you'll be able to launch it without breaking it?

Showing them in a parade means they are not ready to use if the US or the South attacks.

Showing fakes in a parade means they don't have real ones.

Re:Some analysts say...

[VortexCortex]

So the ones they showed in a parade are fakes. Now how smart do you have to be to decide to use fakes in a parade?
...
Showing them in a parade means they are not ready to use if the US or the South attacks.

Maybe they were just en-route to another facility. They needed the police / military presence to secure the route anyway, and decided, hell, let's make a day of it and have a parade too.

I could be completely wrong; However, I find your lack of doubt in your own unproven hypotheses disturbing. There's a pretty easy way to find out if the missiles are real. Just ask our intel agents on the inside. Or, you know, read their computer logs we've probably got. There's no way of us knowing for sure, but IMO: If the feds are spouting FUD about how much of a thread China's hackers are, and pretty much ignoring NK, then I'm not too worried about either eventuality.

Re:Some analysts say...

[91degrees]

This sort of thing is faked all the time, in the western world as well as North Korea. People like ceremonies. North Korea obviously either just wanted to impress the locals or thought they were better fakes than they are.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of the propaganda parade isn't to fool an educated external audience. They only have to be sufficiently missile-like for an average North Korean to fall for it. Realistically North Korea's greatest threat isn't going to come from US or South Korean invasion, but internal instability. If you were told there was nothing to eat because the government spent all of it's money on the military, I think you'd at least want some shiny, space-agey technology to show for it.

Re:Some analysts say...

[TheCarp]

The thing is, if they actually had such missles, then fakes are easy. They just pull out some of the prototypes and show those off. The thing is, the prototypes and mockups would be expected to be largely similar to the real thing, and not so wildly different.

Not only that but, why worry so much about hiding the secrets of the technology when they are playing catch-up? Hide them from... who exactly?

They have to know that such weapons are, actually, useless to them as anything but parade toys, as much, if not more, to put on a good show for their own people, as they are to try and wrangle better negotiating position with the international community.

The only real reason they even have for a missle program is so that the intelligence reported back says they have one.

Re:Some analysts say...

[whoever57]

The whole point of the parade was to demonstrate that they had the weapons, though. Why hold the parade just to show off obvious fakes?

You ignore the target of the message. They were not trying to show the US that they had missiles, they were trying to show their own population that they had missiles.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Sockatume]

Precisely my point. As far as we know - and I'm inclined to believe - they don't actually have working missiles yet. They have a PR exercise.

Re:Some analysts say...

[camperdave]

Why take the risk that something happens while showing them off?

If you can't manage to hold a parade without breaking a rocket, what's the chances you'll be able to launch it without breaking it?

When he said "Why take the risk that something happens while showing them off?", he meant "Why take the risk that an attack happens while showing them off, and you can't use the missiles because they're stuck on a parade float in safe mode instead of being in a lauch-ready status?", not "What if they break?".

Re:Some analysts say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

Re:Some analysts say...

[IndustrialComplex]

The whole point of the parade was to demonstrate that they had the weapons, though. Why hold the parade just to show off obvious fakes?

How combat ready do you think the aircraft (or missiles) at Wright Patterson AFB museum are?

Even the Blue Angels aircraft are modified and couldn't be used in combat right away (without modest retrofit ~72 hours).

Re:Some analysts say...

[physicsphairy]

Why take the risk that something happens while showing them off? Showing them in a parade means they are not ready to use if the US or the South attacks. (How unlikely this might be to us, they have a different perspective.)

I hope they don't have a different perspective. If they do, we should pretty much nuke them ourselves right now---our tolerance for their rhetoric is couched in the belief that it really is just talk. If they were seriously convinced that they were on the verge of war, willing to use nukes against us or South Korea or Japan, and willing to take just about anything as provocation, we would not want to be following a policy of "let them get the first nuke fired off at us before we do anything."

Why take the risk that something happens while showing them off?

The reason for using the real specimens is precisely to avoid the kind of speculation we are engaged in right now. Their value as a deterrent (or blackmail) is directly proportional to our confidence in their functionality, deliverability, etc. Ever having to use them is a losing proposition--North Korea would become a sea of glass minutes after the fact. (That assurance of destruction would normally make their nukes useless as a conventional bargaining chip, which is why NK has to up the crazy factor so that we *aren't quite 100% sure* about their intent, and they can demand concessions.) Thus, the only purpose the nukes serve is as a bargaining chip. If seeing fake nukes reduces our belief in their feasibility by 5%, that represents a 5% loss on their investment in that bargaining chip. Not a good play. On the other hand, if they only have one serviceable missile, or otherwise would be embarassing themselves with an honest display, it would be well-worth trying to drum up their apparent tactical abilities.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Sockatume]

Yes, but some of us have seen actual USAF fighters in flightworthy condition, which is more than can be said of North Korea's armaments.

Re:Some analysts say...

[IndustrialComplex]

If you can't manage to hold a parade without breaking a rocket, what's the chances you'll be able to launch it without breaking it?

Every time you take a piece of equipment out, you risk breaking it. Even here in the US when procure equipment we procure spares to cover for the inevitable breakage.

The Presidential Limo got stuck in a driveway the other month, do you think the Secret Service is poorly trained? You don't think something like a mechanical failure on a caisson couldn't occur during a parade?

You would be an idiot to place your actual assets at risk to satisfy some authenticity requirement for a parade.

Re:Some analysts say...

[drinkypoo]

When he said "Why take the risk that something happens while showing them off?", he meant "Why take the risk that an attack happens while showing them off, and you can't use the missiles because they're stuck on a parade float in safe mode instead of being in a lauch-ready status?", not "What if they break?".

You can't just toss these things off, anyway. The USA has the best surveillance equipment on (and orbiting) the planet, and you can bet your ass they'd be the first things we'd attack. They're not useful if someone manages a sneak attack. Thing is, you don't make a sneak attack against another nation any more. Getting ready to perpetrate violence against another country involves a lot of logistics that can be perceived by other countries well in advance even without surveillance satellites.

Re:Some analysts say...

[TWiTfan]

Oh, they definitely have them. It's just a question of how well they work and what their range is.

Re:Some analysts say...

[IndustrialComplex]

The thing is, the prototypes and mockups would be expected to be largely similar to the real thing, and not so wildly different.

I've done my share of military product demos. Prototypes and mockups WILL be different than the real thing. You tend to re-use your demo models for a LONG time because they are not cheap.

One of the units I used for a physical display was just a shell of the unit that was the first test run through the CNC mill and coating process.

Differences:
1. The connector for the final unit was different to accomodate EMI/EMC requirements
2. The milling process had a problem and didn't cut this unit properly, cutting a corner (literally), we used acrylic to build up the corner and painted it to look normal
3. The tray this item would normally be in failed shock/vib testing, the final production tray looked different.
4. A late requirement for extra capability resulted in the final production units having a 'growth' on the back of the units which made their XY profile look quite different than the prototype unit.

However, the unit was good enough for our purposes of giving people a general feel for the size/shape/weight. Unless you looked closely you wouldn't notice the fake corner. Without specific knowledge of the production units, you wouldn't know there should be a bulge in the back.

As for hiding details... the look of components can reveal a great deal about your industrial (or sourcing) capability. Something as simple as 45 degree angles vs 90 degree angles on a tube can reveal a great deal about what North Korea is capable of designing/producing. Maybe those 45 degree angle tubes indicate that they have figured out manufacturing trick XYZ which means they also have the capability to produce N, where N is a critical component in making the missiles reliable to greater than 1000 miles?

There are LOTS of reasons to hide details even if all you are doing is playing 'catch-up'. If you were trying to maintain a clandestine missile sourcing program, you probably wouldn't want the US learning that you managed to snag a bunch of components which are only produced in a certain country. You wouldn't want to risk having that supply source being cut off.

Re:Some analysts say...

[camperdave]

True. But if you have only six missiles, do you want them on parade, or in a silo, ready to fire?

Re:Some analysts say...

[DigitalReverend]

Let's think about this for a second.

If you take down your missiles for a parade thus rendering them unable to be used , and your enemy has the knowledge of the parade, can you guess when your enemy will attack?

Re:Some analysts say...

[Anonymous Coward]

They launched a satellite into orbit. If that's not proof of launch capabilities, what the fuck is?

Re:Some analysts say...

[NatasRevol]

How many of these 'definite' working missiles have they launched in the last 20 years?

In any capacity - proof of concept, testing, threat posturing, attack.

I can't recall anything but words actually being launched from North Korea.

Re:Some analysts say...

[drinkypoo]

True. But if you have only six missiles, do you want them on parade, or in a silo, ready to fire?

A little from column A, and a little from column B.

Re:Some analysts say...

[squizzar]

You can't just toss these things off, anyway

Indeed... you'd need very large hands...

Re:Some analysts say...

[Moses48]

A google would have told you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_Korean_missile_tests 6 in the last 20 years. Their range is "likely" able to hit hawaii, but not mainland US if we go by their missile launch records. Whether they have nukes small enough to fit into a missile warhead is another question we don't know.

Re:Some analysts say...

[NatasRevol]

Sorry, it looks like they had one set of successful tests, in 2009, of any missile/rocket launches in the last 20 years.

The rest ended in failure, most less than 60 seconds into flight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_Korean_missile_tests

Re:Some analysts say...

[TheCarp]

Sure but all this has to be underscored by the fact that they know they can't actually use the missiles. Whether the technology even works is entirely secondary to whether it looks plausible. This may be true for your demos as well, but, with them, its true of the entire program.

I would say the exception here is the rule there, but, if you look at some of our own programs internally, I think Kruschev was right when he said "Politicians are the same all over, they promise to build a bridge even where there is no river".

Frankly, when I saw those pictures of the new Deer Leader, sitting in front of plans for an invasion of the US, at that point its hard to take anything they do seriously. Pictures like that are not accidents: they are staged. Why stage something so obviously ridiculous?

The DPRK are little more than the internet trolls of the military industrial world; and their parades are little more than lame "first post" attempts.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Sockatume]

It's proof that they got one launch to work, which is a significantly lower level of capability than this parade attempted to show off. I'm not saying North Korea's completely free of missiles, just that this demo is likely a vast exaggeration.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting tidbit: The USAF Thunderbird (as compared to the Navy Blue Angels) aircraft are intentionally kept combat-ready. All they have to do it paint and arm them and they are ready to be deployed.

Re:Some analysts say...

[SecurityTheatre]

You're only talking about LONG range missiles (capable of hitting the US).

They have had at least a dozen successful tests of a short-range missile based on the old SCUD design that could hit parts of Russia and Japan (as well as S Korea and parts of China, obviously).

They are even said to have exported this design to Iran and Pakistan.

Here is a history of North Korean Scud missile designs and mentions a number of successful tests:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scud#North_Korea

Re:Some analysts say...

[SecurityTheatre]

They are fairly adept with short-range missiles. During the Iran/Iraq ware, Iran was actually purchasing missile technology and production-ready missiles from North Korea. A number of these were launched and fell on Baghdad and other cities.

Their range, however, is short and would be barely capable of striking Japan (though S Korea is obviously in range).

Re:Some analysts say...

[Richy_T]

No one is about to attack North Korea and everybody knows that.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Anonymous Coward]

They launched that satellite not long ago and utterly failed to put it into orbit. If I recall correctly, the entire launch trajectory was way off, as if they just slapped together some parts, pointed the rocket up and launched with no prep. That's about the limit of their ability.

Re:Some analysts say...

[SternisheFan]

Putting aside the nucleur missiles for a moment, they don't seem that far advanced with that tech, yet. I wonder, what are the capabilities for a N.K. submarine based nucleur launch? That should worry the world more I would think.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Sir_Sri]

Because it's a yearly traditional parade and they want to show something. The civilian populace being 'asked' to line the streets and cheer aren't going to know differently.

For the westerners watching the brigades of RPG armed infantry are far more interesting than a bunch of missiles. Those show the DPRK has been paying attention to what has been working in Iraq and Afghanistan and a few other places. The missiles thing is mostly a theatrical deterrent for the moment anyway. Eventually yes, they will have nuclear armed missiles targeted on Washington DC, New York, Los Angles and anywhere else, and 15 years after that someone (the chinese likely) will give up on bitching about it and just open up trade relations with them and everyone will be happy. Until they get to that point it's a lot of theatre to make sure no one gets any crazy ideas about the DRPK not actually having a working deterrent. They don't need a lot of missiles (even just conventional ones) to be a really serious menace to Japan and South Korea.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of the parade was to demonstrate that they had the weapons, though. Why hold the parade just to show off obvious fakes?

Because it's their own population they are trying to convince, not the rest of the world.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a fool shows his actual cards to the other players at the table.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Jonner]

All of this was discussed in TFA.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that but, why worry so much about hiding the secrets of the technology when they are playing catch-up? Hide them from... who exactly?

When you lack technological superiority you hide details so your enemy will not know what the limits of your capabilities are.

A technologically superior foe can likely learn a lot about what you're capable of by analyzing the manufacturing methods you use (because they know what they were capable of when they used those methods). They probably even know more about what's possible for you to do than you do (because this is cutting edge to you but old hat to them). And that is a dangerous place to be as your enemy can set traps that exploit weaknesses you may not know you have.

Or as Sun Tzu said "when strong appear weak, when weak appear strong"

Re:Some analysts say...

[tchdab1]

Of course, you don't need a missile to deliver a nuke to a place where it can do a lot of damage - as evidenced by nearly every nuclear test ever done.
And you don't need a nuclear explosion to disperse enough radioactive stuff in a populated area to do a lot of damage, as evidenced by Fukushima or Chernobyl.
So why is everyone hung up on the missile capabilities of North Korea?

Re:Some analysts say...

[airdweller]

>True. But if you have only six missiles, do you want them on parade, or in a silo, ready to fire?
>>A little from column A, and a little from column B.

And that's why you're not responsible for any country's defense.

Re:Some analysts say...

[CrimsonAvenger]

what are the capabilities for a N.K. submarine based nucleur launch?

Zero. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that they have such a missile, they do not have a submarine capable of launching such a weapon.

And the lack of submarine to test the SLBM from means that even if they have the missile, they've never actually tested it, and are in no position to test it in the foreseeable future.

And an untested ballistic missile is about as much of a threat as another statue of the Dear Leader (or whatever the lad is calling himself).

Re:Some analysts say...

[drinkypoo]

And that's why you're not responsible for any country's defense.

You really think that's why? Remind me not to come to you for analysis of anything.

Re:Some analysts say...

[drinkypoo]

The Presidential Limo got stuck in a driveway the other month, do you think the Secret Service is poorly trained?

I think that's an example of someone not doing their job correctly, but that doesn't mean they're poorly trained. I do think the presidential limo is a POS. There's no good reason for it to have so little ground clearance. Might as well use a humvee as the platform.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Hognoxious]

nucleur

Hi Dubya, long time no see.

Re:Some analysts say...

[Hognoxious]

Of course, you don't need a missile to deliver a nuke to a place where it can do a lot of damage - as evidenced by nearly every nuclear test ever done.

Are you suggesting they send the warhead via FedEx?

Re:Some analysts say...

[Coren22]

From all appearances, I don't think Kim knows that...

Re:Some analysts say...

[Richy_T]

If he really thought that, he would be hiding in a hole somewhere. It's all bluster to impress a population that is kept in the dark about the real state of things.

Yes, decoy

[Anonymous Coward]

The real McCoy is cyber warware.

Re:Yes, decoy

[SJHillman]

He's a doctor, not an egomaniacal third world leader with nuclear weapons and a taste for freaky porn!

Re:Yes, decoy

[nospam007]

"The real McCoy is cyber warware."

Indeed. We already knew, the US conquered all the computers of the North, both of them.

Re:Yes, decoy

[camperdave]

He's a doctor, not an egomaniacal third world leader with nuclear weapons and a taste for freaky porn!

So close!

He's a doctor, not an egomaniacal third world leader with nuclear weapons and a taste for freaky porn, Jim!

Fixed that for ya.

Re:Yes, decoy

[Anonymous Coward]

But the current NK dictator's father was an INTERNET EXPERT, so he himself probably is one as well. You don't fight your enemy on his own turf, where he has the advantage.

"Fakes" or Custom Builds?

[cmholm]

It wouldn't surprise me if much of what the DPRK has put on display are mockups. A bit of craftsmanship and just enough engineering to keep the suckers from visibly shaking and flexing during a parade is a lot cheaper than the real thing, and does 90% of what you need a missile to do.

On the other hand, it's possible that the newer stuff are all custom one-offs. SCUDs they probably have an assembly line for. I'm not sure if they've really had enough launches to wring the bugs out of anything higher performance, a point at which they can freeze a design and say this is the definitive [cobert]Type-O-Dong[/cobert], model X.

Re:"Fakes" or Custom Builds?

[Imrik]

On the other hand, it's possible that the newer stuff are all custom one-offs. SCUDs they probably have an assembly line for. I'm not sure if they've really had enough launches to wring the bugs out of anything higher performance, a point at which they can freeze a design and say this is the definitive [cobert]Type-O-Dong[/cobert], model X.

If the only problems were differences between the missiles I'd agree, but the missiles had other oddities in their construction even when looked at individually.

Re:"Fakes" or Custom Builds?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If anything, I'd expect purpose-built mockups to exhibit greater uniformity than would mockups built from the discards of an actively iterating R&D project, or functional prototypes from a reasonably late stage of an R&D project...

Even substantially less expensive gear, with a much stronger incentive for mass production(small arms, light artillery, that sort of thing) handled by well reputed defense outfits with a century of experience tends to have enough 'Block A vs. Block B' and different revisions and licensed variants and things to keep military trivia enthusiasts arguing endlessly.

I'd imagine that very low quantity development hardware from the DPRK rocketry program has a certain number of 'file to fit' and 'option plate Z goes here if stage 1 pressure test is marginal' hand-scribbled annotations on the blueprints and assembly instructions.

Re:"Fakes" or Custom Builds?

[SJHillman]

Given that each one is a little different, my first guess would be that they're prototypes for testing different things. The US has certainly built enough non-functional or partially-functional prototypes over the years. And if you don't think we've paraded around prototypes for the masses, just go look at the space shuttle Enterprise - it never made it into space, but we still put it on display.

Fake PARADE nukes

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because they use fake nukes on parade doesn't mean they don't have real ones. Who would use real nukes in a parade?

Re:Fake PARADE nukes

[jellomizer]

A country without much money to make mock-ups, and real nukes.
Say a country that is isolated from the outside world with very few trading partners. Who tends of emphasize their military?
 

Re:Fake PARADE nukes

[TWiTfan]

Do you honestly think it would be cheaper and easier to remove real nukes from silos than to build cheap mockups? Even if NK was THAT poor (and they're not when it comes to their military, which is one part of NK that is well-financed) that would be a pretty stupid way to try to save money.

Re:Fake PARADE nukes

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that these weapons are fired from a mobile launcher and not a silo, your argument is almost valid.

Does anyone know

[Anonymous Coward]

if they bought a 3D printer? Just ONE of those fuckers in the wrong hands and it's death by plastic trinket for the entire species!

Does it matter if SOME are?

[TWiTfan]

It only takes ONE to start a major war.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[SJHillman]

There's no history to back that up. However, history would suggest that it only takes two to end a major war. So maybe N Korea is just preparing to end three wars.

The only reason you know the above isn't true is because it's more logical than what N Korea usually comes up with.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well someone might lose a city, but NK would be no more. It'd be the shortest war ever.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Sollord]

So because we have no recorded history of someones using a nuke to start a war means we won't have a major war if just one is used?

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[SJHillman]

The current record for shortest war ever is the Anglo-Zanzibar war at 40 minutes. Even with nukes, it would be hard to beat that against any opponent larger than a city.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Lumpy]

Nope.

They fricking crashed planes into our buildings and attacked the Pentagon and we did not go to war. WE called it war, but it was a half assed attempt. If it was a war we wound have carpet bombed every fricking city known to have talaban, and Pakastan right now would be shaking in their boots that we would come in and clean their house for them.

After 9/11 we could have NUKED something and the world would have not bat an eye, instead of acting like the lion, we acted like a scared bird.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[PopeRatzo]

They fricking crashed planes into our buildings and attacked the Pentagon and we did not go to war. WE called it war, but it was a half assed attempt. If it was a war we wound have carpet bombed every fricking city known to have talaban, and Pakastan right now would be shaking in their boots that we would come in and clean their house for them.

After 9/11 we could have NUKED something and the world would have not bat an eye, instead of acting like the lion, we acted like a scared bird.

"They"?

I had no idea the "talaban" were behind 9/11.

That's why I come to Slashdot: to learn stuff about the world.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

idiot.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Sockatume]

If you're suggesting that North Korea would be nuked in retaliation for a nuclear attack, I dare say that South Korea would object to that plan.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[nedlohs]

Of course not, you should get a refund from whomever your logic teacher was though.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're suggesting that North Korea would be nuked in retaliation for a nuclear attack, I dare say that South Korea would object to that plan.

Unless South Korea was the target of the attack, then their attitude to a retaliatory strike might just be a tad different.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

The world would have done more than "bat an eye". The world was up in arms over your idiotic and nonsensical invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (neither of which had anything much to do with 11/9) and you can bet your donkey there would have been international uproar if the US had gone nuclear.

By the way, massacring thousands or millions of innocent, defenceless people (whether by nuclear or conventional weapons) is not "acting like a lion". It's "lashing out like a frightened, hysterical pussy". But then that's Americans for you: Afraid of everything. Afraid of terrorists, even though you're more likely to die accidentally in your bathtub than by terrorist action. Afraid of communists and socialists and paying taxes. Afraid of guns. Afraid of not having guns. Afraid or immigrants. Afraid of ethnic minorities and of ethnic majorities. Afraid of imaginary "death panels", afraid of sonic booms, afraid of killer bees, afraid of flouride in your drinking water, afraid of anything and everything your media and your political system can spin into fear. The reason for this is that sellers and politicians know that Americans have three comforts: Buying, eating and shooting. When Americans are afraid, they start buying, and they will buy anything or vote for anyone that promises them some comfort. But then they start shooting, and they will shoot anyone and anything if it will temporarily assuage their fear.

When Britain faced terrorism in the 1980s, with crazy people blowing up city centres on a regular basis, did we flip the fuck out and start murdering random people by the thousand on the other side of the world? Did we flush our civil rights down the toilet, set up a bunch of overfunded, unaccountable security theatre agencies and usher in a police state in the name of "security"? Did we give a small group of deluded murderers the credibility and reputation a massive, international James-Bond-Villain-conspiracy? No. We set the police onto the bastards and got on with our lives. THAT is "acting like a lion". At the very least, it's "acting like a grown up."

Anyone who is now depressed, here's an on-topic link to cheer you up: watch Dr House sum up the last few decades of American Foreign Policy through the medium of song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqCha93nBTU

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[camperdave]

Actually, the world pretty much unanimously condemned your country's response to 9-11. You would have been faced with trade sanctions and cancelled treaties if you'd actuall gone ahead and nuked something. You think your economy is in the dog-house now? Imagine it if you didn't have access to half your imports and exports.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

WE called it war, but blah blah blah bunch of 101st Fighting Keyboarder macho chest-thumping

Why don't you go up to some of my friends who came back from Iraq or Afghanistan missing pieces of themselves and tell them they weren't in a war. I dare you.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Sockatume]

Even then I don't think the additional long-term damage from a further nuclear strike right next door would be worth it, compared to a conventional response.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

9/11 was a false flag event orchestrated by powers within the US, dumbass. That's common knowledge now.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we went to Iraq and took our anger out on an unrelated dictator while spending hundreds of billions. A nuke or two would have been a lot cheaper. Instead, we dropped a few MOABs. We moved *fast* too - our tanks can fire accurately while strafing at 45 mph. The only problem we have is terrain - mountains are very difficult to clear, something DPRK has a lot of.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Sollord]

In case you missed it I was being sarcastic towards the post i was replying to there's no logic involved...

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[TWiTfan]

Are you seriously going to contend that thousands of Catholics in Northern Ireland weren't beaten, killed, imprisoned, etc. during that conflict? Oh yes, Britain certainly has NO blood on its hands. It's not like they've invaded 9 out of 10 countries in the world at some point, or anything. Only those brutish Yanks would do that!

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming they use a Nuke I don't think it will be much a war. I can't see the US using a Nuke unless one is used on us. Same with most of the other countries that have them in large supply. I am kind of curious assuming they do have a rocket that can get a Nuke to the US or even if they Nuke South Korea how long would it take before someone Nukes NK off the map?

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

The assertion was not that Britain has no blood on its hands and is blameless in all things. Yes, we were imperialist bastards a hundred years ago. Yes, we probably could have handled the IRA situation better. That isn't relevant. The point is that Britain didn't let panic, fearmongering and profiteering turn an internal criminal matter into an international military adventure that consumed entire countries, obliterated the rule of law and crashed the global economy.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[socode]

> Did we flush our civil rights down the toilet, set up a bunch of overfunded, unaccountable security theatre agencies and usher in a police state in the name of "security"?
Yes.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation please, for the above in the context of Britain in response to the IRA.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[nedlohs]

I didn't miss the sarcasm. It doesn't change that it doesn't make sense to make fun of a claim the person never actually made.

But sure, you could have just made it up completely rather than making an error in the logic of the claim.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's not like they've invaded 9 out of 10 countries [telegraph.co.uk] in the world at some point, or anything

What's that got to do with it? If we're going to play that game, I could bring up Iran contra, smallpox blankets and segregation, but it wouldn't get us anywhere.

This isn't a game of "my country has never done anything wrong and yours are dirty bastards", it's a game of "your country did this one specific thing wrong. For comparison, here is how another country handled a comparable situation in an entirely different way."

In short, grow up.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Did we flush our civil rights down the toilet, set up a bunch of overfunded, unaccountable security theatre agencies and usher in a police state in the name of "security"?"

I don't know, does the CCTV that's on every street corner in London count as flushing your civil rights down the toilet in the name of security? Can the police stop you and search you at any point with no warrant or cause?

Really, for a brit, you're remarkably uninformed about your own country.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aha, a daily mail reader I see. Contrary to tabloid belief, London and Britain don't have any more CCTV cameras than any other comparable first-world country. That statistic was fabricated by the Mail by taking ONE particularly CCTV-infested street in an inner-city somewhere, working out the cameras-per-mile-of-road for that road, then multiplying that number by the number of miles of road in the entire country. It's basically http://xkcd.com/605/ but for CCTV cameras.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheaper in money maybe, but what would it have cost you in lives and in international relations?

Rather than just taking out your anger on some unrelated third party, surely the best solution would have been to not invade Iraq in the first place?

For NK... well there's no easy attack plan. There's no magic bullet, not even a nuclear one. The military leadership there may be crazy, but it would appear they aren't entirely stupid. They have their abundant time and limited resources digging in very effectively, making sure that any attempt to oust them will be very very messy indeed.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dog house? What are you, kidding? The US economy is on fire right now - unemployment dropping, housing market nearly recovered, DOW at an all time high.

The European economy on the other hand is a disaster at the moment. Not that the US imports anything of real use beyond overpriced cars from there anyway, any more. China sure as hell isn't going to halt exports to the US since their entire economy and investments are currently tightly linked to US economic fortunes.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Britain faced terrorism in the 1980s, with crazy people blowing up city centres on a regular basis, did we flip the fuck out and start murdering random people by the thousand on the other side of the world? Did we flush our civil rights down the toilet, set up a bunch of overfunded, unaccountable security theatre agencies and usher in a police state in the name of "security"?

Bwahaha. There are so many CC cameras in your country that no one can take a shit without it being recorded. Even Orwell couldn't have predicted that level of rights flushing - the British are the masters of giving up their civil rights these days. It's even sadder that you never noticed.

Not to mention UK is behind only the US in troops in Afghanistan (and number killed). You'd think you would have learned since it's your FOURTH TIME THERE. At least this time you had help so you didn't have to withdraw.

And finally - you must be kidding about crazy people blowing up city centers and UK not responding excessively. Then again, if I had almost had my country wiped out by British genocide over the last few hundred years I'd probably do anything to get the rest of them the hell out, as well.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[TWiTfan]

Yeah, a hundred years ago, ancient history. Tell that to the Falkland Islands.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[TWiTfan]

No, it's about a Brit daring to lecture *anyone else* on the immorality of imperialism, as if you have some moral high ground on the matter.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Livius]

World War I only took two bullets.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

war (wôr) from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/war
1.
a. A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
b. The period of such conflict.
c. The techniques and procedures of war; military science.
The war was over quickly, it is the 'peacekeeping' that is hard.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.

So how, exactly, do you think Iraq and Afghanistan don't fit into this? The entire period of our involvement in those two countries has certainly involved "open, armed and prolonged conflict," and note the word "parties" at the end of that definition--it doesn't have to be nation-states. Any time you have two or more large bodies of armed people trying to kill each other, you have a war. You can call it "peacekeeping" or anything else you like, but that doesn't change what it is.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Ash-Fox]

Why don't you go up to some of my friends who came back from Iraq or Afghanistan missing pieces of themselves and tell them they weren't in a war. I dare you.

If you want him to honor that request, you should at least post an address.

Re:Does it matter if SOME are?

[Anonymous Coward]

internment
diplock courts
collusion
bloody sunday

Probably not real

[Murdoch5]

They probably just want to use a scare tactic, make the US think they have the firepower and wait till they back down out of fear. It's like a bully at school who threatens to beat you up every day after school but never actually does it, your scared until you figure out he's a bigger pussy then you are.

Re:Probably not real

[SJHillman]

But bullies usually at least look intimidating. This is more like the underweight nerdy kid in the slow reading group playing with his Power Rangers action figures saying that someday, the Power Rangers will beat up the jock. The nerdy kid might be able to give the jock a black eye if he throws the action figure, but then the jock will beat the living shit out of him. And break the nerdy kid's toys.

The bright side of North Korea

[stevegee58]

Say what you will about North Korea, you still have to admit those guys sure know how to put on a parade.

Re:The bright side of North Korea

[Gaygirlie]

Say what you will about Kim-Jong Un, but he has shown great dedication in how to have a cake and eat it, too. He has already mastered the latter part of that!

Re:The bright side of North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, a fat joke. How droll.

captcha: anomie

Re:The bright side of North Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

but he isn't going to get any more Choco Pies for quite a while.

jr

Re:The bright side of North Korea

[stevegee58]

I understand they deliberately fattened him up with a high carb diet so he'd more closely resemble his grandfather.

Re:The bright side of North Korea

[Crypto Gnome]

Say what you will about North Korea, you still have to admit those guys sure know how to put on a parade.

Yeah, but so does Mickey Mouse - and NOBODY takes him seriously as A World Power either.

Speed ridges

[tippe]

Close inspection of the nose of the missile shows the warhead's surface is undulated. Some analysts suggest the wrinkles mean the material is a thin metal sheet, unable to withstand flight pressures.

Maybe they're speed ridges, you know, to make them go faster. Sort of like speed holes on a sports car, but different...

No, in case I fooled you, I'm not a rocket scientist.

Re:Speed ridges

[Anonymous Coward]

Homer, is that you?

Re:Speed ridges

[VortexCortex]

Close inspection of the nose of the missile shows the warhead's surface is undulated. Some analysts suggest the wrinkles mean the material is a thin metal sheet, unable to withstand flight pressures.

Maybe they're speed ridges, you know, to make them go faster. Sort of like speed holes on a sports car, but different...

Or maybe they're just ribbed for her pleasure?

Re:Speed ridges

[Anonymous Coward]

Well - I have seen the real V1 and V2 rockets close by (living in the Netherlands and have seen the not-launched but in good condition ones - we had launch bases in the center of some towns like The Haughe). I can assure you the noses where absolutely not smoothly flat, but still made of thick metal plates that could survive a long flight trajectory.

As we all know these devices DID fly and caused a lot of damage.

Do not forget a rocket does not have to follow a (very) high trajectory and nevertheless end a respectable distance away, so withstand leaving and re-entering the atmosphere (where a smooths surface could be critical) could be of no importance.

So - To say not straightly flat surfaces are a sign these rockets are not usable is not really convincing to me.

Re:Speed ridges

[Anonymous Coward]

no, that's what the flame stickers are for.

Re:Speed ridges

[animpaul]

Its Ned, he learned about the speed holes after watching Homer. Now now Ned drop the pickaxe!

Re:Speed ridges

[Anonymous Coward]

Like thousands of tiny fingers urging her to let go...

Re:Speed ridges

[Anonymous Coward]

But we all know that to make it go faster, you have to paint it red.

Re:Speed ridges

[Errol backfiring]

Speed ridges only work at subsonic speed, to make the boundary layer turbulent so it "sticks" better to the surface. A rocket is not a golf ball. On the other hand, wrinkles only have impact on the speed and distance it can cover, not on the deadliness.

Well,

[dennison_uy]

Only one way to find out ...

Re:Well,

[SternisheFan]

Only one way to find out ...

Eventually we will have to call NK's bluff, just to see if they are bluffing. One guess as to who would 'win'.

Re:Well,

[camperdave]

Yeah! I wonder how much of a "win" it would be if New York and Chicago wound up as a smouldering radioactive craters.

Re:Well,

[SternisheFan]

Yeah! I wonder how much of a "win" it would be if New York and Chicago wound up as a smouldering radioactive craters.

That's why I put apostrophes around the word ''win''. It's the most dangerous game of 'poker' mankind has ever invented.

N. Korea points a gun at the U.S. The U.S. points their gun at N. Korea. We know that that U.S. gun IS loaded with live nukes, N.K.'s gun may be empty, or it might have a bullet or two.

N. Korea will lose if they in any way decide to 'fire first'. They might win a battle (if they aren't bluffing), many somewhere would die. Can they reach the U.S. with missiles capable of carrying nukes? Doubtful. Subs? Maybe. But once they launch ONE missile, it'd be game over for North Korea. Other nations "might" be successfully attacked, and historians will say the U.S. should have launched a pre-emptive strike. Like I said, a very dangerous game they are playing, mostly dangerous for N. Korea and it's neighbors.

Solution: decapitation

[fnj]

Look, I don't know for sure if they are faked, and neither does anyone else. If they are real, all of the world leaders need to be removed and punished for allowing it to happen. But let's suppose for a moment that they ARE fake. I do know that the idea of blackmailing or threatening mass devastation using fake WMDs is evidence of either very sick (and stupid) minds indeed, or a bankrupt response policy on the part of the civilized world. We know this has been done before. Saddam Hussein did his level best in 2003 to convince the world he had WMDs and would use them. In response his military was shredded, he ended up dead, and his country was reduced to a wasteland in slow motion after his military was conquered.

Now, SH's ghost can maintain that his foolishness served its purpose, since ultimately the US was bankrupted and the US politico-strategic goals were turned into a sick twisted forlorn mess that ended in a worse outcome than the status quo ante. OTOH, SH lost his own life, his political movement was turned into an ash-heap, and most telling of all, his nation ended up in a living hell that continues.

Clearly if others nonetheless, seeing all this, choose to follow in his footsteps, something is wrong with the response to this kind of psychopathy. I can't believe that effective precision decapitation is so hard to do. In one instantaneous surgical strike, send all of the leadership to meet their maker. The US bungled doing this to SH on the eve of war. What was so hard about that? Find them and destroy them, and do it with force so much the opposite of showy that far from being shock and awe, no one in the country even realizes it has happened until you litter the whole countriside with pamphlets and everyone realizes that the reason none of their leaders show up any more is that they have been eliminated with extreme prejudice. That the entire civilized world acted as one, that they will repeat as many times as necessary, that they exercised extreme care not to harm the population, and that they did it barely lifting a finger.

Exactly the same goes for Iran. If they continue going out of their way doing their level best to convince us they are psychopathic, relieve Iran of its burden with a snap of the fingers.

We have tried the silly way, treating psychopaths like civilized human beings, and it continues to make monkeys out of us. Sure, our own cowardly leaders are afraid of the same thing being done to them, but they are fools to think they can guarantee their own oh-so-sacrosanct personal hide is protected if they only don't provoke the true psychopaths. And they bloody well should be afraid the same thing could be done to them if they themselves act like psychopaths.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[drinkypoo]

I do know that the idea of blackmailing or threatening mass devastation using fake WMDs is evidence of either very sick (and stupid) minds indeed, or a bankrupt response policy on the part of the civilized world.

You mean like when we claimed Hussein had WMDs although we knew he didn't? Yes, that was sick, and morally bankrupt. And done for profit.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[fnj]

You need to read up. SH made up his fake WMDs as deliberate policy. He actually essentially confirmed this later. He made them pretty convincing. Pretty much all intelligence worldwide was fooled. Yes, the response was just as crazy as the provocation. I thought I made all this clear.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[drinkypoo]

Pretty much all intelligence worldwide was fooled.

This does not even approach the truth. Pretty much all intelligence worldwide was skeptical, and we knew that even as we declared that he definitely had WMDs. Revisionist view of history is revisionist.

Yes, the response was just as crazy as the provocation. I thought I made all this clear.

You did not even make your views clear, and your views do not define the situation.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Cassini2]

Saddam Hussein thought he had chemical weapons, and definitely wanted them.

George Bush said he had chemical weapons.

Most of the worlds intelligence agencies, including the CIA, were quietly saying they were no chemical weapons. Some of these agencies had their results taken out of context by their superiors.

If I run outside my house, stark naked, on a city street, carrying a fake gun, screaming "I have a gun!!!" The police will probably shoot me. After a while, that was what happened to Saddam Hussein.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[fnj]

Alas, it is you who are revisionist. Try checking the facts. Deal with it.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Sockatume]

Even a charitable analysis of the situation would suggest that a mixture of "motivated reasoning" (bullshitting yourself to a predetermined conclusion) and/or sheer staggering incompetence was necessary for Hussein's posturing to be read as a credible, actual threat.

Even if he hadn't been complying with his disarmament agreement (which, lest we forget, was partly necessary because Western governments had been selling him chemical weapons and manufacturing equipment for years) that's a political issue for the UN, not a military one. Russia doesn't invade the US every time START gets derailed.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Anonymous Coward]

To follow your analogy, he had already been knocked down (Gulf War), had most of his actual weapons taken away (1990s disarmament operations), and while a bunch of officials searched him for other weapons (ongoing UN inspections), some random guy from across the street (Coalition forces) ran over and shot him, then moved into his house (Iraq), installed himself as the head of the household, and did a really piss-poor job of paying the bills (making the country work) and generally looking after his family (the Iraqi people).

Re:Solution: decapitation

[drinkypoo]

Saddam Hussein thought he had chemical weapons, and definitely wanted them.

There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein actually thought he had chemical weapons. And since he was kept drugged up the whole time he was on trial, nobody ever got any conclusive answers to anything. He managed to get some good zingers in during the trial anyway.

George Bush said he had chemical weapons.

So, two of the least credible people on the planet said that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, and that's supposed to be convincing?

If I run outside my house, stark naked, on a city street, carrying a fake gun, screaming "I have a gun!!!" The police will probably shoot me.

Probably. But if you run outside your house stark naked with no gun in sight (and clearly, nowhere to conceal one) screaming "I have a gun" they'll probably just taser you.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, we established that US politicians and their spokespuppets repeated the same BS over and over until the public bought it. Straight out of Goebbels' playbook.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Sockatume]

Be carefuly with that analogy. There's no question that Hussein actually had chemical weapons until the '90s. We sold him the fucking things, and the capability to make more, before the Gulf War, and the UN implemented a disarmament treaty in the aftermath. Whether he was following that threaty - and what risk any remaining weapons might present - was central to the Iraq war. It's not like, apropos of nothing, Western powers decided he must have weapons of mass destruction.

Of course there's a preponderance of evidence that whatever his ambitions, he simply did not have the weapons or the capability to make them. That is, there was evidence of absence, not absence of evidence.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[drinkypoo]

Be carefuly with that analogy. There's no question that Hussein actually had chemical weapons until the '90s. We sold him the fucking things,

I know that, and I've made the point that we "had the receipt" more than once here on Slashdot. However, as you say:

Of course there's a preponderance of evidence that whatever his ambitions, he simply did not have the weapons or the capability to make them. That is, there was evidence of absence, not absence of evidence.

We knew that what we had sold him was no longer around and we had no evidence that he had actually managed to use what we sold him so really, there was no evidence that he had WMDs and we knew that. There was all evidence that it was possible for him to get WMDs but if that is the bar then we're all fucked.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Sockatume]

Oh, that last paragraph was my way of making it clear I agreed with you.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Hentes]

Saddam Hussein definitely had chemical weapons, he just used them all up on his own people by that time.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Hatta]

Yes, regime change in Iraq was so easy, we should do it all over the world! All it takes is a snap of the fingers...

Wait, wait, who's the psychopath here?

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Anonymous Coward]

Saddam Hussein was being intentionally uncooperative with the UN weapons inspectors. He had historically had the WMDs he was accused of, so it was know that he could have rebuilt them if he had chosen to do so. There was however no strong evidence that he had done so other than reasoning that if he had nothing to hide he wouldn't be risking UN action by jerking their chain over the inspections, and there were plausible explanations for how he could have (if he chose to) hidden the weapons from the inspectors (due to the limited access he provided them).

It's a lot like if you walk in on a child with a marker and ask if they drew on the wall and they say "maybe". Except here the child had an UV reactive marker in their hand and when you finally get around to pulling out the UV light to check it turns out there wasn't any writing after all.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[formfeed]

Probably. But if you run outside your house stark naked with no gun in sight (and clearly, nowhere to conceal one) screaming "I have a gun" they'll probably just taser you.

Unless you're in L..A.
They probably would shoot you. -And then five other naked people just to make sure they really got you.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether he was following that threaty - and what risk any remaining weapons might present - was central to the Iraq war.

No it wasn't. The Bush administration has done a great job rewriting history. Remember that, in the very beginning, the Bush White House initially claimed that Iraq was behind the attacks in 2001? That was clearly untrue. Then they claimed something else about trying to "spread democracy," which is an equally poor lie. The "weapons of mass destruction" wasn't claimed until later, when all the other reasons were ineffective. This was a result of the fact that Saddam Hussein did not have any WMDs immediately before the US attacked.

Re:Solution: decapitation

[Sockatume]

Whatever the actual motivations of the agents involved, Iraq's disarmament compliance was the argument for war, and the essential dispute between the UN and the Coalition. You'd have to have been asleep for the entire year leading up to the invasion to suppose that it wasn't absolutely fundimental.

Slashdot is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... exactly the right place to ask these kind of questions! Crowdsourcing intelligence work works.

So to answer the question: Yes. They are "unintended" fakes, i.e. meant to be real but they don't fly.

for the love of god

[Charliemopps]

Seriously folks... they HAVE nukes. We know this. They've detonated them underground, we've detected the flash. It's fact. (unless both they and our own government is lieing to us... a distinct possibility)

Do they have missiles that can launch them? Who gives a shit? Any ballistic missile they would have would be trivial for our military to shoot down. They do, however, have very sophisticated submarines. All they need to do is load one of their nukes on a sub and sail it into a major harbor anywhere in the world and viola, world catastrophe. This is the threat we should be worried about. The whole missile thing is just sabre rattling, irrelevant of their real capabilities. They'd need thousands to overwhelm our defenses.

Re:for the love of god

[gsgriffin]

The real bummer would be that a nuke in a harbor would truly piss off the surfers for the amazing wave it would create.. and all of the surfers are out in the ocean, not the harbors.

Re:for the love of god

[Sedated2000]

I know that they had detonations, but I also remember reading that they weren't picking up enough radiation to prove that it was a nuclear explosion and not just large stockpiles of traditional TNT. The explosions were small for a nuclear blast as well, well within the range of what a mass of traditional explosives could do.

This definitely does not prove they _don't_ have nuclear arms, but doesn't it at least cast a bit of doubt?

Re:for the love of god

[Sockatume]

How do you pick up the flash from an underground nuclear test, exactly? The current concensus is that it could just have easily have been faked.

Re:for the love of god

[phantomfive]

For nuclear subs, they need more than just nukes. They also need miniaturization. You aren't going to fit this man on the end of a missile.

Re:for the love of god

[Anonymous Coward]

The grandparent was slightly off, but we have detected the seismic waves emanating from a nuclear test event. They are consistent with prior examples, so there is high certainty that NK has performed three (two of which were even moderately successful) nuclear tests.

Re:for the love of god

[DerekLyons]

They do, however, have very sophisticated submarines.

Sophisticated, maybe, but there's no real evidence of that openly available. Not to mention, what those that aren't obsolete or (at best and being generous) obsolescent and aren't extremely short ranged miniature boats are short range coastal submarines. The numbers may be impressive to the non professional, but their capabilities shouldn't be.
 

All they need to do is load one of their nukes on a sub and sail it into a major harbor anywhere in the world and viola, world catastrophe.

None of their boats have the range to reach more than a bare handful of the major harbors of the world. Not to mention the risk of the crew deciding they don't want to die on a certain suicide mission today and giving themselves up. (Or a subset of the crew starting a mutiny and thus ending the mission.) There's a reason why the nutjobs of the world concentrate on missiles rather than other delivery systems... missiles can be designed to operated by a trained monkey smart enough to push the Big Red Button. Unlike submarines and aircraft, they don't require intelligent and trained operators in direct operational support. And those trained monkey operators can be overseen by trained monkey security forces and both guarded by trained monkey guards - providing multiple levels of loyal support. Nutjobs absolutely loathe armed forces without a deeply loyal counter to those forces close at hand - too many times in history those armed forces have decided they'd like to take a go at being the head high nutjob.
 

This is the threat we should be worried about. The whole missile thing is just sabre rattling, irrelevant of their real capabilities. They'd need thousands to overwhelm our defenses.

And you don't think there are any anti-submarine defenses keeping an eye on their larger boats? (The handful that pose a regional threat that is.)

Re:for the love of god

[ideonexus]

Nukes do the most damage if detonated in the air above the target. The effects of a nuke detonating in a harbor would be blunted by the shoreline and water. It could potentially do a lot of damage, but nowhere near what a nuke detonated hundreds of meters above the center of a city would do.

Re:for the love of god

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked that movie, but as long as Kelsey Grammar is on our side we should be OK.

Re:for the love of god

[Rich0]

Sophisticated, maybe, but there's no real evidence of that openly available. Not to mention, what those that aren't obsolete or (at best and being generous) obsolescent and aren't extremely short ranged miniature boats are short range coastal submarines. The numbers may be impressive to the non professional, but their capabilities shouldn't be.

Tend to agree. Subs come in two major categories:

Diesel-electric subs can be very quiet on electric power. I'd think that even the US would struggle to locate a very well-designed one (no idea if NK actually has these). However, their range on electric power is purely tactical - they're not going to cross the ocean on batteries. On diesel power they're very detectable - they're loud, and they have to have a snorkel detectable by radar above the surface. If one got close to a city finding it and getting rid of it would be tough, but they aren't getting there without the US knowing about it, and they could be trivially intercepted well before they got close enough to cause trouble.

Nuclear subs are the bigger threat in general, but the US is very good at detecting these as well. They can cruise the oceans underwater, but I doubt NK has any. They also are noisy enough that they will be spotted if they pass near a hydrophone, and the US has all those nice hydrophone networks left over from the cold war.

Bottom line is that NK isn't going to sneak into US waters. They could potentially lose a chase for a while if they wanted to, but about the only way to attack a city would be to approach it under diesel under peacetime and park just outside territorial limits, and then close the rest of the distance under electric and mount a first strike. However, if the US was concerned and was already tailing the sub when it was on diesel and they saw it go quiet near a city, they could just follow the thing on active sonar. There is nothing the electric sub could do to escape being followed, short of opening fire on the sonar platform, at which point you're now at war and there's no sneaking up on anything from then on.

Re:for the love of god

[badmoonrising]

Any ballistic missile they would have would be trivial for our military to shoot down

There is nothing trivial about shooting down a ballistic missile.

They'd need thousands to overwhelm our defenses

This is dangerously incorrect. We only have, for instance, 30 GBIs in our entire inventory (see http://www.mda.mil/system/gmd.html). Nothing else we have will stop an ICBM. You are right about to be worried about unconventional delivery mechanisms though

Re:for the love of god

[Charliemopps]

You don't... you put it IN the sub... sail it into port, detonate.

Re:for the love of god

[Charliemopps]

Why would it have to be US waters?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Singapore
Half of the world's annual supply of crude oil flows through this port... Think about it.

Re:for the love of god

[phantomfive]

Suicide subs?

Re:for the love of god

[WuphonsReach]

Newer diesel boats use sterling engines and carry liquid oxygen. Which means they are a lot quieter and can stay under for much longer periods (a few weeks). While they don't have the multi-month endurance of the nuclear boats, being able to go silent for a few weeks is pretty darned good.

Re:for the love of god

[Rich0]

Thanks - wasn't aware of that development. What is their noise output compared to nuclear subs operating at the same speeds? The article really only says that they're quiet, but all modern subs are quiet. I doubt that modern US anti-sub platforms were designed to only be able to detect WWII subs.

Liquid Oxygen is also not something that can be regenerated at sea, so for cruise across the Pacific I would imagine that they would still snorkel, or their range would be fairly compromised when they got to the US. They could also be tailed the entire way from their port of embarkation. Then again, if this were a one-way suicide trip planned out as such I imagine they could make it on their load of oxygen assuming the speed is decent.

whats with this trend?

[nimbius]

the american military has done this crap for 40 years. Threats are received, the enemy is downplayed and underestimated, they suddenly do something wildly advanced and unpredicted. Russias Tupolev was said to be incapable of intercontinental long range flight until we saw it soaring around canada, and at nearly twice its estimated speed. Insurgents basically scrolled through drone video like it was cable TV while we insisted they were just simple sand people. Iran was a perfectly acceptable state-sanctioned boogeyman. it was just itching for 'liberation' or 'freedom' or whatever pretext we need to re-establish regional power until they managed to land our drone at their airport of choice. yet we never seem to shit any big bricks, we just keep plodding away.

now we have north korea. from TFA:

North Korea has demonstrated its ability to build short- and medium-range missiles, and it has launched a small satellite into space. But neither of these achievements would necessarily allow it to reach the U.S. with a warhead.

so how many more steps will have to be completed before we land a competent assessment that north korea can send a warhead to the US? are we seriously going to entertain the idea that a country capable of launching a satellite into space is just 'faking it' when it comes to missile technology? Parent posts are probably correct: you're absolutely insane to parade real missiles in a public square if the goal of those missiles is to be highly mobile and undetectable in the face of a nation thats demonstrated numerous times its willingness to violate foreign sovreignity in the pursuit of furthering its interests.

Re:whats with this trend?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you suggest? Destroying the country because they may or probably have the ability to attack the USA and may attempt to use it?

Re:whats with this trend?

[Sockatume]

Even supposing that the fake missiles are a double bluff against real missiles, as you seem to be arguing*, that leaves North Korea with an actual missile stockpile between several billion and hard zero.

*And not just a publicity exercise completely decoupled from their actual limping weapons program

Re:whats with this trend?

[DerekLyons]

so how many more steps will have to be completed before we land a competent assessment that north korea can send a warhead to the US?

Since they haven't demonstrated the ability to send a warhead anywhere significant, I'd say you're playing Chicken Little.
 

re we seriously going to entertain the idea that a country capable of launching a satellite into space is just 'faking it' when it comes to missile technology?

Given that they haven't demonstrated the ability to send an operating satellite into space... I fail to see that your question has any relevance or validity in the real world. You seem unaware that their one "successful" satellite launch didn't end with an operational satellite in orbit. Their ongoing failures in the satellite business in fact suggest exactly the opposite of the conclusion you'd like to handwave into existence from whole cloth.

Re:whats with this trend?

[badmoonrising]

so how many more steps will have to be completed before we land a competent assessment that north korea can send a warhead to the US?

None. Nukes plus the ability to put a satellite in space equals HEMP capability (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse). North Korea doesn't even have to demonstrate a viable reentry vehicle to have a nuclear weapon that scares me shitless.

"open source intelligence"

[MakerDusk]

Might they be referring to the wikileaks post after the anon north korea 'hacking'?

Almost certainly

[Millennium]

We've probably got a bunch of fakes too: they make good decoys for those who would try to attack or steal our weapons. They're probably better-made, but they're fakes all the same.

The real question is, does North Korea have any of these long-range missiles that aren't fake?

Re:Almost certainly

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake division? The entire fictional First United States Army Group, under Patton, was based in eastern England, with over a dozen fake divisions. It was nominally ready to pounce across the Channel if the Germans committed too much force in Normandy, and was reasonably successful in its intended purpose.

open-source intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

must be the oxymoron du jour.

Stuff that matters

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Not this.

all of the above

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were the boss and you found out your chief strategist didn't bother to use any decoys, wouldn't you fire him?

Re:all of the above

[Anonymous Coward]

At the very least I'd make sure it looked like I was capable of firing him!

Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if they were all fake. Why waste all of that money on something that's never going to be used?

Photoshop

[opusbuddy]

That's from the 3D capabilities of CS6 Extended.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Damnit, Slashdot! Look, we've got a MEME we need to uphold here! We need to feel smug and superior about ourselves without applying much thought, and if you keep making headlines that clearly violate Betteridge's Law, that's not going to happen! Get with the program already! Geez!

Schmucker?

[SoundGuyNoise]

"'At first I thought, 'Wow, they finally managed it,' says Markus Schiller, an aerospace engineer working for Schmucker Technologie, a German company that consults on security issues."

Who's the schmuck now?

N Korea declared they intend first strike

[Anonymous Coward]

N Korea declared they intend to do a nuclear first strike on the USA. That fact alone justifies any attack we make. Just save time and trouble and this time when we attack and invade a country, just make it a state already.

JJ

Decapitation: not so easy as ALL THAT

[PeterM from Berkeley]

How long did it take the US to decapitate Al Qaeda? I mean, seriously, d'you think finding and destroying enemy heads of state is easy?

Saddam Hussein was NOT easy to find. He had his whole country to hide in--and he did. The US didn't get him until US had control of his country.

The US also missed Qaddafi--he stayed free until he lost control of his country too! NOTICE A PATTERN HERE?

US got lucky with Bin Laden--and Bin Laden didn't control Pakistan nor have control of a country's resources to help him hide.

And if US tries the same thing on NK's leaders, US not only face a high probability of failure, US faces almost certain nuclear retaliation, perhaps not against US, but against US interests at the least.

The reason US/TheWest don't routinely 'decapitate' is not only because TheWest just CAN'T do it (history demonstrates this), it's because it's stupid to try it unless your enemy is incapable of retaliation.

--PM

North Korea

[Lost Penguin]

Why does North Korea remind me of a bad episode of Pinky and the Brain?

NK has nukes. Period.

[PeterM from Berkeley]

You CAN make a big bomb with TNT, nuke sized even.

However, I do NOT think that you can fool US detection. I'm not familiar with the techniques used exactly, but don't you think the seismic signature of a nuke and a big conventional bomb would be very different? How about neutrino fluxes? Can't fake that with TNT. How about "the flash" (other than neutrinos), like long-wave EMP radiation that might make it through the ground, and maybe a trace of high energy stuff? How about residual radionucleotides that escape?

I don't think Government lying could even be done successfully--it's not just the US who has capability of analyzing seismic data to determine if it's nuke or not. I bet Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Japan, and Israel could ALL do that too. If the US gov't tried to lie about it, they'd be caught out immediately.

NK has nukes. Period. Due to all the arguments above, I believe it is a fools bet to think otherwise. The news reports do say they're pretty lousy nukes, but they're nukes.

--PM

Of course

[Maudib]

Also its very likely that their last two "nuclear" tests were fakes as well using large amounts of conventional explosions.

Real I Tell You!

[jasper160]

It is the best that photoshop can make.

North Korea is analogous to Iran

[Anonymous Coward]

North Korea threatens to destroy the US the same way Iran threatens to destroy Israel. They're all talk - there's no way they would actually try to do it.

Re:Duh...Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall any such parades in the US.
I do recall such parades in the USSR--Leftists like these types of things.

So what

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this on slashdot? Who cares

Re:Decapitation: not so easy as ALL THAT

[fnj]

I'm completely with your starting point. The US is incredibly incompetent at knocking off the psychopaths at the top, but is pretty good (albeit at staggering cost) at liquidating huge numbers of underlings and innocents. In fact this is so much the case that I don't believe they are trying. Then you come to that whole paranoid phantasm that Saddam had a whole slew of "doubles" so how could he ever be found.

The difference with me is that I don't just accept this happy horse manure. I demand that the US smarten up.

Here's what seems like a clue to me. Countries are impoverished by wars, but the elite get rich. Why spend 100 grand to hire an assassin or send a small commando team to nail the leader when you can make the military industrial complex unimaginably rich stealing the people's money to fund a gigantic war to knock off all the pigeons? US leader after US leader, do you see my middle finger?

As for the difficulty decapitating Al Qaeda, that is clear. The network is underground and not organized too hierarchically. Also, as a collection of fanatics, new heads will just pop up instantly. Despotisms like Saddam's Iraq, North Korea, and Iran are entirely different. The headers wear UNIFORMs with MEDALs. They stick out like sore thumbs. They are extremely hierarchical, and the power structure is in it for self aggrandizement. Yes, in Iran they do harness religious fanaticism to their ends, but they are not at all similar to Al Qaeda.

Finally, do you really think NK's command structure is going to survive the elimination of the leadership and be all gung ho to retaliate and thus commit suicide? Retaliate how? With a bunch of fake missiles, or at best some ancient liquid fueled crap that sticks out like a sore thumb while it is mounted on a launchpad and laboriously fueled up for launch because it can't be stored and erected with fuel in it? Granted, all the while we twiddle our thumbs it does get gradually more and more perilous as NK does make progress.

There is no bright side of North Korea

[iksrazal_br]

Actually his dead grandfather is the eternal president still, they keep the country together by cult worship of him, "cleanest race" and blood purity propaganda, and the worst death camps on earth for the last 50 years such as Camp 14, where children are born as slaves for life under "three generations of punishment" .

Its unfortunate that these Nuclear and Chemical weapons headlines obscure the human rights violations. Currently there is a UN commission investigating NK for crimes against humanity. After reading "Escape from Camp 14" I was completely appalled that these death camps exist even today, and according to satellite images are expanding.

But why the paint job?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know is why they have the terrible camoflauge paint job. Wouldn't they look better and more awsome if they were all high-techy coloured and stuff?
When they move these things around the Americans watch them every step of the way, they can't hide them with cammo paint, its not like they are wheeling these things through the jungle or anything either, at any great speed. You can't hide these things, seriously, and so you are parading them around, make them flashy, give them some style! Paint the image of a few great Kims on the side, make them something that really pops, stands out...

don't these dictators know how to do propoganda anymore?

Re:NK has nukes. Period.

[MobyDisk]

How about neutrino fluxes? ...How about "the flash" (other than neutrinos), like long-wave EMP radiation...

The problem is that none of these things were detected!
Wikipedia: 2009 detonation - Lack of radionuclide confirmation

or this one:
Wikipedia: 2013 detonation - ...as of two days after the blast, Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean investigators had failed to detect any radiation...

All evidence we have shows that it *was not* nuclear.

Almost certainly

[istartedi]

Google "Quaker gun". According to Wiki that phrase dates to the American Revolution; but I bet It's the oldest trick in the book. I bet we can find storis of the ancients doing fakes. There was an entire fake army division prior to D-day in WW2, along with the real ones. My favorite WW2 fake was the bomber with a tail gun that had a double-length barrel with an unusual looking flame arrestor on it. It was either an ordinary gun or a broken tail gun. The Germans didn't want to mess with it though, because it was pretty bad looking.

Every Country

[wisnoskij]

It would be pretty stupid for any country not to have a few decoys, and a few extra well hidden installations.

what about the "lust" factor

[k6mfw]

i.e. from the line in the movie "Dr. Strangelove" of something like "...it's all about lust if you keep it a secret. Why did you keep it a secret!?!?" while asking the Soviet ambassador who replied, "Premier was going to announce it at Party Conference, as you know he likes surprises." I cannot recall the exact conversation from the movie.

Or something like that... Kubrick did a lot of research of politicos and technology of the time which much shown in movie has a realistic resonance. Soviet doomsday machine that was proposed but Kruschev (sp?) cancelled the program, "bomb 'em back the stone age" general, and illustrating B52 weapons systems (there are several steps and procedures to ready a nuclear bomb, they don't have readouts that tell you when exactly it will explode). This 1964 film also illustrates the psychology of various people with nuclear weapons.

Probably fake, but it doesn't matter

[Animats]

There's a good chance that the missiles shown in a parade were fakes. Many early missile designs didn't travel well. The US Atlas ICBM had walls so thin it had to be pressurized to keep it from collapsing. When not pressurized, it had to be held in a fixture that kept it under tension. North Korea's missiles are roughly at the Atlas level of technology - they're liquid fueled. Putting them on off-road trucks is not too useful, since they have to be accompanied by liquid oxygen trucks. They need a launch complex.

The Atlas was a good booster. Variants of the design were used into the 1990s. (There's a current "Atlas" booster, but it's a full redesign.) North Korea clearly has boosters in that league - they've launched several. They're just not well suited to parade displays. So it's quite likely that, for parade purposes, dummies were used.

Fakes? How about that?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of our nukes are fakes in the USA? Think about it. How many billions were spent on nukes during the cold war? Is it stretch to think that the guys placing the orders wouldn't just pocket the money and never bother to actually make anything at all? Grease enough hands to keep the lie going and everyone gets rich. As corrupt as our so-called leaders are, I think it is very likely that the bulk of our nuclear arsenal is just as imaginary as the gold stored in Fort Knox. I'd even go so far as to say that nukes are completely fictional scare tactics and that the technology is nothing but fantasy.

Not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

They can put them on a container ship and float them into a port among lots of other stuff. The container with the nuke can be rigged to detonate if the container is opened, removed from the ship outside a set of coordinates, etc.

unka Sam would be locked up

[Thud457]

Problem solved!

So just to be clear. Them threatening to nuke us, bad. Us nuking them just to be sure, good. OK?

The USA has a proven capability of nuking a motherfucker right up.

The Rothchilds

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you stop watching fox news and realize bankers control the world and every war every fought.

Henry Kissinger - "Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."

As are you the American public. A dumb stupid animal who thinks that China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and all of them are not controlled by the Rothchilds and their subordinate bankers. I'm American! I listen to CNN and Fox news!! I Do what they tell me to think!!

Bankers like to rowel retards such as yourself and Slashdot up, making you think North Korea is actually more power than the Rothchilds. Making you think Iran is more powerful than the Rothchilds. Making you think Syria is more powerful than the Rothchilds. It's fucking hilarious laugh they are all having at the very top when you play their game. When you get manipulated. When you fall for their mind control. This is all a game and you are choosing to play it.

Rest in peace Gaddafi - the man who stood up to the Rothchilds.

Compensating.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard of the stories surrounding North Korean endowment, but this is ridiculous.

One does wonder how Our Dear Leader (the most perfect specimen of humanity ever in history) ever managed to get his trousers on.

Re:NK has nukes. Period.

[Anonymous Coward]

Radionuclides were detected after the 2006 test. There is every reason to treat the 2009 and 2013 tests as nuclear tests. It is likely that they were sufficiently deep that no measurable radionuclides escaped - your link to the 2009 test even states this possibility.

- T

Re:Two points

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of inventing something and not using it a couple of times? amirite?

don't make me have to go all grammar Cossack on ya

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I put apostrophes around the word ''win''

OOOOHHHHHHHH..... why I ought'a....

Re:NK has nukes. Period.

[gaspar ilom]

Radionuclides were detected in 2013, and 2006.

North Korea may have taken extra precautions to prevent their tests from releasing radionuclides, in order to conceal the nature of their fission devices (Pu-239 vs U-235, or possibly other isotopes) -- and thus, conceal & protect the supply chain for their fissile material.

Furthermore, don't let the low explosive yields fool you: NK is likely testing the compact trigger for full-blown, fission-fusion-fission thermonuclear devices -- whose explosive yield could be up to several hundred kilotons.

Old!

[DuranDuran]

This story is well over a year old. There's absolutely nothing new here.