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North Korea Parades Hybrid 'Frankenmissile', Then Fails Yet Another Missile Launch Test (cnn.com)
First, an anonymous reader quotes Inverse:
On Saturday, the North Korean military paraded an unprecedented array of weapons through Kim Il-sung Square in the center of Pyongyang... "We're totally floored right now," Dave Schmerler of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, tells the Wall Street Journal. "I was not expecting to see this many new missile designs." Schmerler tells The Journal that the large missiles -- the "frankenmissiles," as he calls them -- in the parade appear to be hybrids of the North Korean KN-08 and KN-14 missiles, both of which are ICBMs.
But at least one arms control expert noted that while the parade included ICBM-sized canisters, "what's inside is anyone's guess" -- and there's still mixed results for the country's missile program. "An attempted missile launch by North Korea on Sunday failed, US and South Korean defense officials told CNN... At this point, US military officials don't believe the missile had intercontinental capabilities, a US defense official told CNN." The official said there was limited data -- because the missile blew up so quickly -- prompting CNN.com to run the story under the headline "Show of Strength a Flop."
Update: Slashdot reader Dan Drollette is a science writer/editor and foreign correspondent for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and contacted us earlier today to share his recently-published analysis "to delve into what has been happening lately...and to discredit some common tropes in the media, such as the idea that 'North Korea is about to collapse,' 'China has a lot of influence over North Korea,' 'North Korea can credibly threaten the United States right now,' 'North Korea has no reason to feel threatened,' or 'The North can be completely denuclearized.'"
But at least one arms control expert noted that while the parade included ICBM-sized canisters, "what's inside is anyone's guess" -- and there's still mixed results for the country's missile program. "An attempted missile launch by North Korea on Sunday failed, US and South Korean defense officials told CNN... At this point, US military officials don't believe the missile had intercontinental capabilities, a US defense official told CNN." The official said there was limited data -- because the missile blew up so quickly -- prompting CNN.com to run the story under the headline "Show of Strength a Flop."
Update: Slashdot reader Dan Drollette is a science writer/editor and foreign correspondent for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and contacted us earlier today to share his recently-published analysis "to delve into what has been happening lately...and to discredit some common tropes in the media, such as the idea that 'North Korea is about to collapse,' 'China has a lot of influence over North Korea,' 'North Korea can credibly threaten the United States right now,' 'North Korea has no reason to feel threatened,' or 'The North can be completely denuclearized.'"
Well, it's not quite that cut and dry; subs move, make noise, wakes, create magnetic anomalies in motion (and image subtraction can trivially find one of those consequent to continuous MA observation of any area where the sub is, assuming the monitoring capability is available), and while no one tries to track each jetliner using sufficient resources to never lose sight of it, there's good reason to think that we would be keeping track, as best we can with the resources we have available, any NK asset that presented a potential nuclear threat.
That said, even if we're on them at any one point, it doesn't mean we can't lose track of them, either. Even a hardware failure of a tracking resource could put this kind of thing into play where one might ordinarily assume it wasn't. This stuff is devilishly complex. Lots of ways for tracking to fail.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A crashed airliner is stationary, dead and cold in over 2 miles of water. A moving sub is live, and hot, in less than 200 meters of water. The NK diesels have to come to snorkel depth, maybe 30 meters. Not so hard to find
They're diesel boats. They can run on batteries during the hours of daylight if necessary, but they can't run on batteries long enough to cross the Pacific (realistically, they can't run on batteries long enough to go 100km). Most of the time, they'll be running on diesels, and can be heard by anyone within a 100 km or so.
And they can't outrun a nuke boat. Not even sounding like a freight train (diesel boat running at max).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
They're probably thinking of things like near-field synthetic aperture sonar. You can get images as clear as this, which gives the impression that water is no obstacle. Distance, however, changes what one can do, and there's quite a difference between passive monitoring and active monitoring as well.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Our boomer and attack subs are decades more modern than the junk that North Korea has. Their ocean-going subs are all old Russian Romeo, Whisky, and Hotel class subs. They have a few midget subs but they could not reach the US.
In other words, you also do not know what you are talking about if you compare the subs of NK with US.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.