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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.
The elephant in the room is that they have been enabled, if not actively assisted, by China for decades. Sure is a good thing the US wasn't dumb enough to outsource a huge chunk of our manufacturing to the totalitarian country silently backing these guys and their nuclear ambitions for the sake of next quarter's corporate profits, huh?
I don't think it's really fair that you refer to our president in that way.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually, we have seismic confirmation of North Korea's five nuclear tests, the most recent of which was last September. We can even estimate the yield of each test; last September's test was about 25kt, about 2/3 greater than the Hiroshima bomb.
It was North Korea itself that claimed the warhead from last September was missile launchable.
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a madman straight out of an Austin Powers movie.
There is nothing "mad" about NK's behavior. The Kim dynasty has been extremely successful at staying in power. Even more than the Castro dynasty in Cuba, which started later and has yet to manage a generational transition.
Let's look at the track record for "giving up nukes", the supposedly "sensible" action:
1. Saddam Hussein gave up his nukes in 1991
Result: Overthrown by America and executed.
2. Muammar Gaddafi shutdown his nuke program in 2003
Result: Overthrown and murdered by forces backed by America.
3. Ukraine gave up their nukes after being given an American guarantee of their borders and sovereignty.
Result: Invaded by Russia, while America did little.
Given America's track record of betrayal, NK would be nuts to give up their deterrent.
You're right. Dr Evil was funny.
— President Donald Trump, 2017 Aug 8
— Mr. Donald Trump, 2013 Aug 13
A pertinent message from a time traveler:
https://twitter.com/realDonald...
You are welcome on my lawn.
U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
The problem is that, for the moment, Japan has no nukes, and its military power, by and large, is defensive in nature (due to the confines of the post-war constitution). Japan, and to a lesser extent South Korea, both rely upon the United States to serve as their primary guarantor of security.
Now there's certainly a growing movement in Japan towards amending the constitution, and some view a nuclear-armed Japan as a possibility, and this is why it has long been in the US's interest to act as Japan's primary defense, so as to prevent nuclear proliferation.
If North Korea is allowed to continue its nuclear program, then it makes the possibility of other Asian states, in particular Japan and South Korea, becoming nuclear armed states more likely. Thus Pyongyang's program is likely to lead nuclear proliferation in the Asia-Pacific. This certainly doesn't serve China's interests, and for many in the region, a nuclear-capable Japan is going to raise some rather longstanding concerns over Japanese militarism.
The real problem here isn't whether NK should be allowed to continue working towards functional ICBMs. As the unity of purpose in the Security Council demonstrates, the one thing that everyone can agree on, even if they can't agree on anything else, is that North Korea gaining ICBM delivery of nuclear warheads. The problem is what to do about it. China seems prepared to back up its displeasure with sanctions, but NK is a master of evading sanctions. Further, it is a regime that seems to have no problem allowing large numbers of its citizens to suffer, so in the short, and possibly the medium term, I doubt the sanctions will impact its weapons program at all.
But a military attack against NK is going to have significant ramifications. Even with its conventional weapons, NK has spent six decades arming its border with SK to the teeth. While there is some debate over how much damage it could do to South Korea, there's no doubt that the regime, even as a death spasm, could cause tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of deaths. It could even do damage to Japan as well. Such an event would create heavy casualties, not to mention the significant blow to the global economy; South Korea and Japan are among the most economically important nations in the world.
There simply appears to be no good answer to this problem. An out and out attack could destroy the regime, but the costs would be very high. Allowing NK to pursue its nuclear weapons ambitions, which I view anything but absolute economic isolation enforced by a blockade (which is really a declaration of war anyways), is not going to stop those ambitions. We've been on this course for over a decade. NK has made no secret of its ambitions, and now doesn't even seem to want to use it as a pretext for aid from South Korea and the US, and fear over the consequences of outright military intervention has stayed the US's hand.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Have they? I see these map graphs with range circles associated with certain missiles
NK's launch last month reached an altitude of 2700 km. That means it had enough velocity to reach either Anchorage or Oahu if it was in a flatter trajectory. They kept it in a near vertical trajectory to make it easier to monitor.
if they can figure out how to design the missile to withstand reentry
The missile doesn't have to reenter, only the warhead does. They can accomplish that by wrapping in a bundle of asbestos ... or they could skip the reentry and do an EMP burst 200 km above Honolulu / Pearl Harbor.
if they can perfect complex gyros and navigational hardware / software
They kept it in a clean vertical trajectory for 2700 km, so they have already accomplished all of this. Btw, there is a 3 axis "complex gyro" chip in your cellphone. This isn't the 1950s.
if they can figure out how to insure it does not explode on launch or break up in flight...
They have already done this repeatedly.
I find it amusing that NK and the US leaders now basically indistinguishable:
Kim: We give you All Out Nuclear War
Trump: You are Looking for Trouble
Kim: The US will End in Catastrophe
Trump: We will be Very Severe
Kim: The Final Doom is Upon You
Trump: We will bring Fire and Fury
Kim: You shall be Made Into To Ashes
(all appear in headlines recently)
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
So explain me again, why would the USA intelligence be lying about this?
The largest American intelligence agency is not the CIA, but the DIA, which gets its funding from and answers to the DoD. They have a vested interest in inflating threats to ensure generous funding of their parent organization.
I am not accusing them of exaggerating, I am just pointing out that they have a clear incentive to do so.
And what could Clinton or Obama have done differently? At the end of the day, neither one of them wanted to rain down fire on the Korean Peninsula, and at the end of the day, I have a feeling Trump will be restrained by calmer voices. The price of a military attack on North Korea would have been huge 20 years ago, and it would be huge today. At no point was NK ever going to seriously stop developing nuclear weapons.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
a madman straight out of an Austin Powers movie.
There is nothing "mad" about NK's behavior. The Kim dynasty has been...
Is it weird that I legitimately thought he was referring to Trump? ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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
Well, I guess we can say aloha to Hawaii (the goodbye one)
Jokes on you, my account was actually purchased and is operated by a group of indolent unemployed barbers who own a gas station in Topeka.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
NK's launch last month reached an altitude of 2700 km. That means it had enough velocity to reach either Anchorage or Oahu if it was in a flatter trajectory. They kept it in a near vertical trajectory to make it easier to monitor.
Where did you get that, your favorite news anchor? ICBMs use a "high apogee" trajectory because it's the most energy efficient. If you flatten the trajectory, you won't get anywhere near the range you seem to think you will.
if they can perfect complex gyros and navigational hardware / software
They kept it in a clean vertical trajectory for 2700 km, so they have already accomplished all of this. Btw, there is a 3 axis "complex gyro" chip in your cellphone. This isn't the 1950s.
Making it go straight means they have pretty good control software; you don't need great gyros for that. But navigation is a different animal. If you think you can guide a ballistic missile along a 4,600 mile trajectory (NK - Hawaii for example) and come within 100 miles of your target using inertial sensors that are even 3 or 4 orders of magnitude better than the ones in your cellphone, you're probably also deluded enough to think you can make effective use of GPS aiding on an ICBM.
There is no great wisdom in debating whether a madman brandishing a pistol has bothered to load the weapon. But this whole business just seems odd.
Lets have some real history here.
The Agreed Framework, negotiated by Clinton, froze the DPRK nuclear program in place. All the facilities were shut down and placed under international inspection. This lasted for 9 years - from 1994 to 2003.
But in 2003 "Dubya" decided to put his swagger on and concocted the "Axis of Evil" in a State Of The Union speech lumping Iraq, Iran and the DPRK together as if they were an alliance, then decided that fall to abrogate the Agreed Framework and also make more blustering remarks.
Result - the DPRK kicked out the IAEA, restarted their nuclear facilities and three years later began testing nuclear weapons.
The Democrats, under Clinton, shut down the NK nuclear program.
The Republicans, under Bush, goaded them into restarting it - and once the genie was out, it could not be put back in.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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.
If Herr Hitler had had nukes, that may have been the ultimate deal. That is precisely what happened during the Cold War; the West had to accept Soviet control of the Warsaw Pact countries, even when the people of Czechoslovakia rose up to try to toss out the Communists (the Prague Spring).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Have they? I see these map graphs with range circles associated with certain missiles - which have not flow that far
You know, it really doesn't matter if they have or they haven't. What they have proven is they are determined to build a nuke. We have valid data that they have did this.
Given all that I would say we have to go on the notion that they have and react with that assumption till otherwise.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
The problem of making an atmospheric reenter vehicle for the warhead is trivial in comparison to making a multi-stage rocket. Or the nuclear device itself.
The Democrats, under Clinton, shut down the NK nuclear program.
Even as they immediately started up a separate enrichment program, more or less immediately. Don't lecture about the facts and then leave the important ones out.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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
The "puppet masters" are feeding the media publically establishing pretexts for action... like they did b4 Iraq.
I actually think that Donald Trump is more dangerous to America than Kim Jong-un. Yes, absolutely. Kim Jong-un is probably more dangerous to South Korea, and Japan and to North Korea, but Donald J. Trump presents a far greater danger to the well-being of the United States of America than Kim Jong-un does. So is he a "more dangerous leader"? I don't know how to measure that. The answer depends in great deal on where you happen to be, geographically.
Kim Jong-un isn't gonna do shit to the US.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We've been getting threats from the Kim family forever. That's what they do. It's all internal politics to get North Koreans to forget about how shitty their lives are. In the same manner, Trump has always made threats, from lawsuits against people who don't like him to "fire and fury" against North Korea today. It's what he does. And in the same manner, it's to get people to forget how shitty he is.
Russia has literally thousands of ICBMs pointed at US targets, but anyone who points out their behavior, whether in Ukraine or in messing with US elections via propaganda. is painted as someone who has succumbed to the "Red Scare". Yet we have Kim, who we are told could someday have an ICBM pointed at Alaska and those same people will try to tell you he is an existential threat to the United States. Not long ago, Iran was the existential threat. Or China was the existential threat. Or refugees. Or Mexicans coming to pick vegetables. Or gay people getting married. Or transsexuals. Or college students. Or Obama coming to take yer guns away.
And all of it is theater to get people to forget shitty lives and/or shitty leaders.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Once they get the range up the continental United States makes a pretty big, hard to miss target. Doesn't matter if it ends up in some remote, unpopulated area. The threat is enough.
That's the point really. A mad man got control of nuclear weapons and a powerful army, but they had the foresight to develop defences that would assure mutual destruction. Remember that if the US were to use nuclear weapons, the Chinese would like do so too, and their's are much more advanced.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Lets be blunt, you do not go to an insane asylum to establish normal relations. The NK government is nuts, you simply contain it under threat of extreme retaliation and leave it alone. In fact use it as a model for permanent, well at least until the change, isolation. Rather than expending resources and lives on destroying resources and lives, it is far smarter to invest limited resources of containing the situation. Right now North Korea is pretty much China's problem and China after a fashion is dealing with it. The latest kerfuffle would not even have occurred if the US had not tried to lock down China with a fake problem after the Chinese built a military base next to a major US base, in Djibouti. Especially when it is received like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... So the US played silly buggers and purposefully created a crisis to try to lock down China and prevent them from occupying that base. Complete utter crap by the US deep state and a total failure, even worse, many countries in the region are now reaching out for support and help from China, specifically in defence against US warmongering incursions. The US deep state are just a bunch of psychopathic, moronic, self serving fuckwits that are bringing the US undone, all over the place, at home and abroad, just insanity.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen