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A confidential Defense Intelligence Agency intelligence asessment has concluded that North Korea has miniaturized a nuclear warhead to make it capable of being launched by its ballistic missiles:
The 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 United States calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts think the number is much smaller.
[...] Although more than a decade has passed since North Korea's first nuclear detonation, many analysts thought it would be years before the country's weapons scientists could design a compact warhead that could be delivered by missile to distant targets. But the new assessment, a summary document dated July 28, concludes that this critical milestone has been reached.
"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. Two U.S. officials familiar with the assessment verified its broad conclusions. It is not known whether the reclusive regime has successfully tested the smaller design, although North Korea officially claimed last year that it had done so.
Meanwhile, President Trump and Kim Jong Un have traded barbs:
President Donald Trump appears to have painted himself into a corner: He must now follow up on his pledge of hitting North Korea with "fire and fury," or he risks further blowing U.S. credibility.
Kim Jong-un's regime said late on Tuesday that it may strike Guam. That came shortly after Trump warned Pyongyang it would face "power, the likes of which this world has never seen before" if the renegade state continued to threaten the U.S.
"If the red line he drew today was 'North Korea cannot threaten the U.S. anymore,' that line was crossed within an hour of him making that statement," said John Delury, associate professor of Chinese studies at Seoul-based Yonsei University.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday August 10 2017, @04:30PM (5 children)
No, it wouldn't leave one smoldering crater of a nation. You seem to be operating on the mistaken impression that it's possible for the US to annihilate NK without causing major problems for its 3 immediate neighbors: US allies SK and Japan, and China. SK and Japan would probably lose millions of people to radiation poisoning and other side-effects of the war. Plus any weapons NK has that aren't aimed at the US are aimed at SK and Japan, so odds are Seoul and Tokyo don't exist anymore either. As for China, they would at a minimum start an economic blockade against the US which would ruin the supply chain of most US hard goods businesses as well as the US government's ability to borrow money.
So at a minimum, 1 crater plus a couple of other death zones, plus a US population desperate for things they can't produce anymore and now can't import.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday August 10 2017, @05:24PM
Not operating under that impression at all. A war in the area would be a disaster, for all involved and possible the area at large and I have no doubts about that. NK isn't going to just roll over and die. What I do believe Trump has done is to tell Kim that he ain't getting one more dollar and any threats of hostile actions on his part is going to be met with equal hostile actions. He put the ball back in Kims court, Kim then responded that his attack plans for Guam would be ready by the middle of August. So now we wait.
It won't change fact tho that this would be a very one sided conflict, not that NK wouldn't be able to strike back at all or inflict serious damage. They quite clearly would, but it is an un-winnable war for them. They might dig down and dig in but there only victory would be at best a draw for them. The smoldering crater could be achieved with non-nuclear options, so it doesn't have to be the glowing death cloud of radiation -- even tho I would operate under the assumption that when NK is about to lose they'll go down in a mushroom-cloud.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday August 10 2017, @06:56PM (3 children)
NK is weird. Its not like north vs south dakota. I used to work with a SK dude and verified my data today via wikipedia.
"In the good old days" back when cigarette smoke and leaded gas were good for you, "we" did about 100 above ground nuke tests, sometimes multiple tests per year. It'll piss people off but it won't really hurt anything too much to drop a couple bombs. So we get a free pass on say half dozen targets. The problem is there's not much to hit in NK...
We've also done a lot of work on reliable delivery vehicles. We could make an unholy mess with high yield ground penetrators but we'd probably air burst from as high an altitude as possible causing near zilch fallout (well, zero compared to a ground strike)
NK also takes the city-state thing to its logical conclusion. Pyongyang is 10 times as large as every other city in the country, maybe the top 15, top 20 added together. NK IS Pyongyang surrounded by starving peasant farmers. It is a state that surrounds a city, as in city-state. So in classic "Trump Style" turning NK into glass for all practical purposes means one bomb on Pyongyang and its all over. NK is kinda like New York State and I'm not just talking political or economic policy. There's one big city and a bunch of farmers and thats about it. Its Illinois like. Not like CA or the midwest in general. 99.999% of the land mass is impoverished farms not worth nuking, and one big city. There's really only one strategic target and its Pyongyang. There's a couple stationary military targets, maybe better hit with conventional weapons.
The reason why China hasn't blockaded us already is they kinda like our money and our bonds and stuff. A close analogy would be as if the Russians took over the Crimea, which they did. Starting a trade war with the USA would be an interesting way to experience China's own great depression. It isn't gonna happen. At most there will be a lot of bluster.
NK has no strategic value to anyone other than as a buffer zone to invading China along the lines of the purpose of eastern europe during the cold war. Russia has no deep seated love of Poland, they just want a speed bump for next time Germany invades and Poland happens to be the name of that speed bump. My guess is a deal would be made with the Chinese like we promise not to support reunification so they get to keep a nice buffer, in fact they can have the entire freaking country as a province if they want AFTER we drop a nuke. Its not going to be a Cuban missile crisis event.
The prevailing winds in NK are from the east to the northwest kinda stagnant. The only way Japan is getting fallout is taking the long way around or momentary weird patterns. Kinda like if Chicago got nuked it would require unimaginably weird weather patterns to get fallout on Minneapolis, its just not happening. I wouldn't go fishing in the Yellow Sea anytime soon (thats the sea between NK and China). Folks in Liaoning are gonna be pissed off... not so much Japan and SK.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday August 10 2017, @08:42PM (2 children)
Also, we have large weapons that can be deployed is relatively high-altitude (relative to a ground burst), which significantly reduces the fallout products. The ground gets hammered with a shockwave that is unsurvivable for normal structures, but it doesn't get to be a significant part of the fireball the way it would with a ground burst or near-ground burst.
Also also, we have MOABs [wikipedia.org], which are non-nuclear, just a bit of a percentage point or so of yield by comparison, (11 ton of TNT-equivalant), but still seriously annoying [youtube.com] to those they are dropped upon. A one-mile blast radius isn't something that allows for just ducking.
I wouldn't feel all that confident of seeing tomorrow if I were in NK anywhere near a military center (or anywhere near where Dear Leader is located) right now. KJI is playing brinksman, and Trump is drooling and ranting as per usual. If he says go, I expect the military will do just that.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday August 11 2017, @09:03AM (1 child)
If by 'a percentage point or so of[sic]' you mean 'yields of a fraction of a percentage point', you are correct. The bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima had a yield the equivalent of 15 kilotons of TNT, i.e. over 1,400 times that of a MOAB. Strategic nuclear weapons have yields in the MT range, with Tsar Bomba (the largest ever detonated, though in a test detonation with 50% of its maximum) is rated at 100MT.
The smallest nuclear artillery weapons ever made are around 72 ton equivalent and go up to around 1 kiloton, but most tactical nukes are in the 1-100 kiloton range. MOAB is under a sixth the power of the smallest nuke ever detonated and under 1% of the power of most of the weapons classified as 'tactical' (i.e. small).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday August 11 2017, @02:34PM
You misquoted; while your [sic] is technically correct, it is incomplete and does not accurately convey my meaning. What I said was, with new emphasis:
So you're saying exactly what I was saying. I was simply pointing out that 11t of TNT is still going to ruin the day of just about any target, so there's little or no actual need to go nuclear. More yield is required only for a significantly hardened target.