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US: North Korean Missile Launch a 'Catastrophic' Failure (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: North Korea failed to launch an intermediate-range missile on Friday, multiple news outlets, citing American and South Korean military officials, are reporting. The failure, The Washington Post reports, caused the regime an embarrassing blow on the most important day of the year on the North Korean calendar. For those unaware, North Korea had planned -- and tried -- to launch a missile to mark the 104th anniversary of the birthday of the country's 'eternal president,' Kim Il Sung.ABC further reports: "It was a fiery, catastrophic attempt at a launch that was unsuccessful," Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. U.S. officials are still assessing, but it was likely a road-mobile missile, given that it was launched from a location not usually used for ballistic missile launches, on the country's east coast, he said. The UN Security Council issued a statement saying its members "strongly condemned" the North's firing of a ballistic missile, which it said constituted a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions although the launch was a failure. "We strongly condemn North Korea's missile test in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, which explicitly prohibit North Korea's use of ballistic missile technology," the official said.
Your "friend" visited the heavily scripted tourist areas of North Korea. It's not an accurate comparison.
I doubt that. The rocket scientists are probably some of the only people in NK who are able to feel reasonably safe, as long as they stay out of politics.
Even in the Kim dynasty ends in a coup by some other faction, the next dictator is still going to want to have those rockets.
Better watch out, North Korea! If you keep this up, the UN might write you a sternly worded letter! You'll wither before the might of their disapproving frown! If you really piss them off, they might even submit a motion to consider a vote on a non-binding resolution, at a later date!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Dammit! They can't tell other countries what laws they may or may not pass! That's our job!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh yes he is :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
why should we pay attentition to the failures of the NK rocket program
Because the rocket program has far more significance than the nuclear program. All the nukes in the world don't mean a thing if you can't deliver them. NK may be trying to fuck up Japan and China (the South has kinda learned to live with this shit) so they might ease up on the sanctions and/or take them seriously as a regional power.
But NK's rockets and nukes are more posturing than tactical. To mean anything, they would have to have the capability to mass-produce these devices (turn them out like sausages, to paraphrase Kruschev back in the day), which NK will never be able to do with their economy. That leaves them with a capacity to, at worst, blow their wad one time, then sit defenseless and receive a crushing retaliation from whatever country their wayward missile fell upon (be a real thing if a missile flew by to mistake China).
OTOH, the regime needs regularly-scheduled holidays and ceremonies to keep all but its hungriest citizens busy and engaged in non-subversive activities. I offer this as an amusing, admittedly biased, but actual footage of a visit to NK and their weird cultish every-day required devotion to the founder and the great leader, particularly on their birthdays. They also need to maintain the narrative that they have the strongest army in the world, and that foreign invasion will happen at any time. Indeed, they have a million-man standing army to maintain each day from falling apart under its own weight. Thus, the dog-and-pony show of missiles and parades and nuke tests and two TV channels showing documentaries of how great their country is, until the power gets cut at nightfall.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
The Tsar Bomba was never a weapon, it was a spectacle, a device made to intimidate imagination but not to be a weapon against any enemy (except if the enemy is common sense). It could not be put onto an ICBM but also it could not be put into a normal aircraft. The Tu95 bomber used to drop it had to be modified, parts of fuselage removed and mid section fuel tanks removed. With the device weighing abo8ut 27 tons and with more than half of the fuel tanks gone the airplane could never make it from Russia to USA.
You can't handle the truth.