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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: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday November 29 2017, @05:06PM
The only reason you really care about a destroyed bomb hitting the target is if it's a contagious bioweapon that you're not certain you've completely killed. The fissile material used in a fission bomb isn't appreciably radioactive, only the fission byproducts are, and the bomb need to explode as intended to get those.
Not to mention, once you blow up a missile you radically reduce the aerodynamics of the fragments so that it's very unlikely that any will reach their intended target. Even in a vacuum, while the center of mass of the missile will indeed continue on it's path to the target (assuming the interceptor contributed negligible momentum), it's unlikely that any fragments would do so since they've all been blasted on different trajectories from the moment of detonation. Think of an exploding firework - how many of those shining balls actually continue to travel along the original rocket's path? None - the explosion sets them all on new paths, even though the path of their combined center off is unaltered.