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from the plans-are-for-next-launch-to-put-DC-in-oven dept.
North Korea's latest missile launch appears to put Washington, D.C., in range (archive)
North Korea appears to have launched another intercontinental ballistic missile, the Pentagon said Tuesday, with experts calculating that Washington, D.C., is now technically within Kim Jong Un's reach.
[...] The missile launched early Wednesday local time traveled some 620 miles and reached a height of about 2,800 miles before landing off the coast of Japan, flying for a total of 54 minutes. This suggested it had been fired almost straight up — on a "lofted trajectory" similar to North Korea's two previous intercontinental ballistic missile tests. [...] If it had flown on a standard trajectory designed to maximize its reach, this missile would have a range of more than 8,100 miles, said David Wright, co-director of the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. [...] The U.S. capital is 6,850 miles from Pyongyang.
Although it may be cold comfort, it is still unlikely that North Korea is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the U.S. mainland. Scientists do not know the weight of the payload the missile carried, but given the increase in range, it seems likely that it carried a very light mock warhead, Wright said. "If true, that means it would not be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to this long distance, since such a warhead would be much heavier," he said in a blog post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @11:20AM (3 children)
You fail to take (at least) one thing into account: ballistic missiles need to be taken down on their way up during the boost-phase. Since they are ballistic, after the boost-phase, they just follow their ballistic trajectory down - and in that part, they may jettison chaff to circumvent your fancy take-down rockets which have yet to prove their worth. Even if you come close to taking it down in the down-part, the (possibly nuclear) debris will still hit your precious 'homeland'.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:14PM (1 child)
They seem to be intercepting descending ballistic missiles in the Middle East [bbc.com].
It's a million times better for nuclear debris to hit a city than a working atomic bomb.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:57PM
Kind of an interesting coincidence.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:53PM
And why couldn't they deploy their hypothetical chaff on the way up as well?
Meanwhile, nuclear debris really is a non-issue - the preferred isotopes for making a fission bomb are U235, with a half-life of 700 million years, and Pu239, with a half-life of 24,000 years. Which is to say that neither is appreciably radioactive. Radioactive fallout comes from the relatively fast-decaying fission byproducts, not the original fissile material itself.