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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 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.