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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.
I don't think it's really fair that you refer to our president in that way.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
— 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.
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!
why are they not discussed?
Perhaps because Israel isn't in the habit of threatening people with nuclear holocaust every 72 hours.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
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
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.
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
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.
exactly. It's a deterrent, they don't threaten to nuke the arab world...but if they get aggressive, there are a few subs out there that would finish any job....