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posted by martyb on Thursday August 10 2017, @01:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-would-YOU-do? dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday August 10 2017, @10:57PM (2 children)

    by fnj (1654) on Thursday August 10 2017, @10:57PM (#551925)

    The USA's first gun-type uranium fission weapon was also a dud.
    (The concept is so "simple" that they didn't bother to test the mechanism.)
    They expected 19kt and the misfire over Hiroshima yielded 9kt.

    Idiot. Hiroshima was 15kt, slam bang center of expected yield. Even if it HAD been only 50% of expected, that's far from a fizzle. A fizzle is less than 1%.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @12:03AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @12:03AM (#551958)

    Thanks for giving us USA.gov's propaganda version.

    Everything that was released about the bomb was misinformation, from the fact that murdering tens of thousand of children was necessary in order to end the war, right on to the tech details.

    If you're still repeating the discredited MacArthur-era swill, it simply shows how gullible and willing to accept the official line you are.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:57PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:57PM (#552860) Homepage
      The officially announced yield was 20kt (for them both, which was a red flag that at least one of the numbers were bogus, and most likely little boy).

      The most reliable source should be the scientists who knew that they would be shitting on their own research lawn if they fudged the figures, and they've said 15+/-3 kt.
      --
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