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North Korea Now Making Missile-Ready Nuclear Weapons, US Analysts Say (washingtonpost.com)
schwit1 shares a report from The Washington Post: North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment. The new analysis completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country's atomic arsenal. The U.S. calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts believe the number of bombs is much smaller. "The IC [intelligence community] assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles," the assessment states, in an excerpt read to The Washington Post. "It is not yet known whether the reclusive regime has successfully tested the smaller design, although North Korea officially last year claimed to have done so," reports The Washington Post.
No proof of any of this.
NK has a track record of making bold claims ... that turn out to be true. They said they were going to build a nuke. They did. They said they were going to build missiles that could reach Japan. They did. They said they would build an ICBM that could reach America. They did (Hawaii and Alaska so far). Now they say they have built a compact warhead that will fit on a missile. Do be so quick to dismiss their boast.
— President Donald Trump, 2017 Aug 8
— Mr. Donald Trump, 2013 Aug 13
This is a tech website. What are some tech related ways in which we could respond ? Aside from spreading viruses to their centrifuges, maybe we could drop 1000s of satellite communicators down to the NK people, sure some would get lost, others fall into government hands, but if only a few fall into the hands of an internal "resistance" it could help gather intelligence or spread western news.
They would not have to be high bandwidth, I'm thinking something like 2-way twitter (but keep it away from POTUS !)
Nullius in verba
Uhhh, GPS chips are required by law to disable for altitudes and velocities common for missiles.
http://gizmodo.com/5824905/you...
The GPS system is also controlled by... the USA. Which can be shut off or reduced accuracy for an area. Which in fact, they actually did for years and only somewhat recently was "military-grade precision" actually given to consumers. Bill Clinton ended it in 2000. It's called "Selective Availability." But they can re-enable it at any time should some dumbasses in North Korea decide to use GPS.
Technically, they said "they would never use SA again." But does anyone really believe that? ONE area where the USA just says "Screw it. We'll tap everyone's phones but we wouldn't dare shut off this gigantic array of satellites WE build, run, and support, if someone was using them to nuke us."
Now, perhaps they might try using the Russian equivalent, GLONASS, system. But Russia knows how to leverage itself. If they knew NK was using GLONASS, they would USE that leverage to bargin. But they (and China) wouldn't just let NK start World War 3. It's about letting assholes get away with "as much as possible" to gain leverage but never letting them "actually do something bad" because then the leverage disappears and the entire political climate changes. (That is, Russia and China don't want WW3 unless they know they can win it and not be crippled for a hundred years afterward.)
Yes, NK has nukes it can put on ICBMs. But that's not all that is needed to "shoot back", as you call it. Their missiles are anything but accurate. There's no telling where they will land. Plus, getting an ICBM up is easy; getting it to come down without burning up is a little harder. They haven't shown that they can do that yet. So, in a nuclear exchange, NK is on the short end. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
The only deterrent they have is being able to strike South Korea with thousands of conventional artillery pieces. Seoul is close enough to the border that it would be devastated by such a barrage.
There is a legitimate worry about what other countries would do if the US attacked NK. Other countries could react or not depending on how they perceive the outcome. My bet is that they do nothing in the interest of self-preservation. The US president is totally unpredictable, so you don't want to react the wrong way or you may be next.
A much, much better strategy for the US is putting nukes in South Korea and Japan. THAT would get China's attention for sure, and it might be enough for them to cage their rabid dog in NK.
Ever since Slashdot got bought up by corporate entities it has become just another tool to peddle MSM propaganda fake news. I remember when Slashdot only contained news for nerds, stuff that mattered.
NK doesn't have ICBMs - they firing IRBMs. if you listen to closely to the MSM they are only repeating what little kim says, funny the more little kim talks, the more the US geopolitical advances. I swear he has to be on the payroll of US agencies. This isn't about NK, it's all about Russia & China.
Saddam Hussein gave up his nukes in 1991
Saddam never had a nuclear weapon. What he did have was French support to build a nuclear plant not controlled by the IAEA in the early/mid 70s, as well as 72kg of 93% uranium. But, the Israelis bombed that plant in 1981 before it was completed. From the Germans, Saddam got several chemical weapons facilities built as well as over 1,000 tons of precursor chemicals for mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gas. He also got German equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin. Over half of his chemical weapons program was of German origin. From the Americans, he got samples of anthrax, West Nile, and botulism up through 1989. He selected one of our strains of anthrax for his biological weapons research program (many years later, Colin Powell would display a vial of anthrax in the UN as a justification for war with Iraq). From the British, Saddam got parts for his "supergun" weapons program, including nuclear triggers. The British government also financed a chlorine factory used to produce mustard gas. He never had a nuclear weapon, but his chemical attacks from 1983 to 1991 using mustard gas, tabun, nerve agents, and CS showed that his Western-provided chemical and biological weapon programs were coming along fine. That Israeli strike against the Osiraq reactor put his nuclear plans on hold though. I'm not sure how many parallels there are between Iraq and North Korea, unless Russia and China are playing the role that Western nations played in Iraq, in which case fine, let them go in and deal with the problem they created, like we did.
Muammar Gaddafi shutdown his nuke program in 2003
While you didn't claim that Gaddafi "gave up his nukes" like you did with Saddam, again Libya never had nuclear weapons. They did have a covert nuclear program, which they claimed was to counter the Israeli nuclear program. While after 2003 Libya was in the process of eliminating the remnants of their nuclear and chemical programs, it wasn't the US that brought Gaddafi down, it was his own people. He was an authoritarian dictator, and his people saw an opportunity to rise up and get rid of him. The only thing the US did was that we didn't stop them from doing that. If you want to draw a comparison with North Korea, Libya is a much better example than Iraq. Maybe Kim can look at Libya as a cautionary case-study and figure out that treating his people better instead of dumping money into nuclear weapons may end up with a better result for him. Nuclear weapons aren't going to save him if the North Korean people and military decide that they're better off without him. There are plenty of parallels between Kim and Gaddafi though, from being authoritarian dictators, to human rights abuses of their own people, to the personality cult, clandestine support for terrorist actions overseas, etc. But the lesson that Kim should take away from Gaddafi's tale should not be that nuclear weapons could have saved Gaddafi from his own people. There's no reason to think that.
Ukraine gave up their nukes after being given an American guarantee of their borders and sovereignty.
First off, Ukraine had a bunch of ICBMs with a range of 5,000 to 10,000 km. What were they going to do, threaten to nuke Vladivostok or Kamchatka if Moscow invaded? Those weapons were a threat to the US, not Russia. Not to mention the fact that Russia still maintained operational control of those weapons, similar to the American "nuclear codes". And even if they did use them to attack Russia, then they get met with Russia's 7,000 other nuclear weapons. Also, what's this "American guarantee of their borders and sovereignty" that you're talking about? Are you referring to the Budapest Memorandum? Go ahead and read the list of items there, find the one that says that America guarantees Ukranian borders. We accused Russi
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
"Weapons of mass destruction" they said. "Mobile chemical weapons factories" they said. "Facts" used to plunge American, British, Australian, etc troops into war, and it all turned out to be a lie, and they knew it was.
We need to be really skeptical of anything these people produce that they use to justify sending more people to their deaths.