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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: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:21PM
I don't think that's necessarily so. The uncle of a girl I dated once worked at a listening station in Taegu. They could hear handheld radio traffic north of the DMZ. If there's any communication that is happening electronically or anything that can be seen from a satellite, they know about it. Also, it's pretty possible that in a country like NK they would have a pretty good idea where Kim is at any time because it's not a place where scads and scads of billionaires gad about in limousine motorcades. Yes, they could try a fake out and transport him around in a non-descript taxi, but then again there aren't scads and scads of taxis or regular cars moving around. Mathematically it just seems pretty feasible to find the right pattern for traffic that matches where the guy is known to have been and when he was there. That's how I'd do it, but I'm sure there are far more tricks up the sleeves of the various intelligence agencies to nail down his whereabouts.
Washington DC delenda est.