North Korea's Satellite Tumbling In Orbit

schwit1 writes: U.S. Defense officials stated Tuesday that the satellite that North Korea launched on Sunday is now tumbling in orbit and is useless. Do not take comfort from this failure. North Korea has demonstrated that it can put payloads in orbit. From this achievement it is a very short leap to aiming those payloads to impact any continent on Earth. They might not be able to aim that impact very accurately, but if you want to ignite an atomic bomb somewhere, you don't have to be very accurate.

Comments

Let's get real

[vtcodger]

Now and for decades to come, North Korea would be very unlikely to use an ICBM/IRBM to launch a nuclear bomb. The missile might not work and neither might the payload after being subjected to the stresses of lift-off and re-entry. Assuming they wanted to blow up Washington, DC, I should think that they would simply smuggle the warhead into the US using the same routes used by smugglers to import carload lots of Cannabis then deliver it using an elderly Toyota purchased on credit . (Be a bit difficult to repossess THAT one when the payments stop).

Re:Let's get real

[MightyYar]

I don't think N. Korea can miniaturize their bombs to that degree. It's probably about 10 tons and bomb-looking as hell. A ground burst also limits the damage. The slow nature of deploying it would make it offensive only - if they were attacked it would be too late to use it. They need the opposite, something that could be launched within a few hours in response to an attack. Something that would sting just enough to make the US decide not to invade.

Actual use would mean suicide, so it's not meant to be used.

Re:Let's get real

[s.petry]

I know next to nothing about nuclear or thermonuclear warheads other than that a modern thermonuclear warhead is pretty damn small. But I suspect that downsizing a bomb once you have one that works probably is not that big a deal. e.g. the US exploded its first nuclear weapon in July 1945. By 1953 the US was deploying a nuclear artillery system. I think it unlikely that the warhead for that was more than a few hundred kg. But what do I know?

That first sentence is honest, and ignorance is easily cured. "Modern" warheads owned by the US are not the same as "Modern" warheads owned by any other nation, especially the DPRK. The US spends, and has spent, massive amounts of money over a massive amount of time developing a nuclear weapons program.

Nuclear "artillery" is costly beyond belief, extremely limited in usability, only effective if there are other larger backers. It is the ultimate weapon of last resort when defending, but has almost zero use outside of that. Time to set up, maintenance of the munitions, handling of the munition, and protecting the munition are complex and costly activities. A tiny warhead mishandled or sabotaged in a base destroys the base and everyone in it.

The DPRK is once again being used for fear mongering. Fear mongering is the main reason why nobody has gone to war to end the regime. The US, UK, and everyone else in NATO loves the DPRK because "scare the populace to get what you want without revolt". China and Russia like them because the west military build up means they can justify their own investments in military power. The recent fear of the H-Bomb is just to convince people that the DPRK can now use small nukes (which it can't), and the fear mongering because of their current missiles, which are SCUD missiles, which can't even launch a tiny satellite... laughable.

High altitude nuclear EMP

[Anonymous Coward]

While it seems like this satellite is harmless, I'm not sure the goal is a nuclear strike but a high altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse. In that case, it need not be accurate at all, just close enough to do some serious damage. Our foreign policy is coming back to bite us in the ass. We had the ability to stop North Korea long before they became this dangerous. We were content to let them be and not try to incite a revolution or go to war to oust their leadership. Instead, we pissed away time and effort in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria. Of course, after all those unnecessary wars, it's tough to sell people on something that really matters like this. One can only hope the North Korean regime values its survival enough to not actually follow through on any threats.