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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, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:04AM (5 children)
It seems that people are in rather ardent denial at this point. North Korea is extremely rapidly getting stronger. Probably with more than a little help from China, but even if not, it's irrelevant. If you'd said that North Korea would have anywhere near these capabilities two years ago, people would have said that NK is decades from getting it. Four years ago these people would have said NK is decades away from getting a nuclear weapon, let alone a thermonuclear weapon. These same people now say NK is decades from mounting a nuclear warhead on these increasingly powerful missiles.
Clearly North Korea has not been listening to the schedule, since it is consistently over-delivering, and on a massive scale.
Decades of impotent US policy, repeatedly dumped by presidents from both sides, have managed to demonstrate the obvious - doing nothing of consequence does not work. People who ramble about "continuing diplomatic solutions" and "continuing sanctions" are deluding themselves into a political fairy tale. The regime does not care about diplomacy or sanctions of any sort whatsoever and will stop at nothing to fully nuclearize.
And what then? "He'll never attack!" these same people say, those who believe he shouldn't have anything even vaguely close to so much as a nuclear-powered firework yet, let alone a working weapon. Shall we wait until he's got a full arsenal? Shall we wait until the regime collapses and these weapons fall into the hands of his former generals turned warlords? Shall we wait until he's backed into a corner by a coup and decides he'll take Seoul, Tokyo, Los Angeles and New York with him on his way to the grave? Until he starts threatening to nuke us if he doesn't get the food aid he wants or sanctions removed (because, remember - as much as he might be "too rational" to do this, do we really want to take the chance, or the chance that without that aid he'll be overthrown by someone who is that crazy?). Shall we wait until he decides to sell this technology to a group or country who will use it? We've already been in a standoff over Seoul held hostage for 50 years, what happens when 'Seoul' becomes cities all over?
Diplomacy will not work. Kin Jong-Un has put his everything into this program, to the point that his soldiers are infested with worms. Heck, a large percentage of that same military ends up carried home from service once they depart, since they can't make it home on their own power due to starvation. This makes things even worse since what remains of the military may decide they have nothing to lose at some point and attempt to off him, and then there's no telling who gets control of those weapons, nor their intentions, and suddenly we have warheads on the black market that "shouldn't exist for decades," but lo and behold, are very real. Even if this does not materialize, his military is half-starved and full of parasites. He is backing himself into a corner where his only tactical options are "do nothing" and "massive suicide attack." This is not a healthy state for an unstable country to be in. Or any country, but especially not one like North Korea. Given this single-tactic approach, sanctions may well give him a greater incentive to nuclearize so that he can cement his power before the niceties he's used to buy off the military run out. Suddenly those niceties can be bought by threatening to blow up the country they came from if they don't start flowing again. The fact that current nuclear-armed nations don't do that today means little to nothing to North Korea, as they have proven the only rules they play by or care about are their own.
Dear Leader does not care about his people. You cannot hurt him that way. He punishes people who disagree with him by putting them into conditions so bad that they have to sift through animal feces in hopes of finding undigested bits of food, or more mercifully executes them with artillery rounds. The only way to convince him to give it up would be to present a far more immediate threat to his life, e.g. a literal gun to his head for the rest of his life. And a theoretical American strike that has yet to materialize is hardly a literal gun to his head. In fact, given history, it is not very credible in the least, especially given the strange and doubtlessly deadly politics within North Korea's government. China might be a route towards peace, but ultimately they just don't care, or they don't have anywhere near the leverage they thought they did and are fairly powerless to stop them.
All the peace that has been bought up to this point has been nothing but a loan, with lives being the ever-accumulating interest. The longer we wait, the more who will die when the bill comes due. The United States has no choice but to act, because sooner or later the bill is going to come due, and at the very least Japan and the continental US will pay in blood. If not, the best case scenario is that NK fully nuclearizes and becomes impractical to assail, even as they slowly attempt to assimilate South Korea, while the rest of the world gets solid evidence that the US is a paper tiger and North Korea gets wealthy selling nuclear secrets to anyone who hates the US. I do not say any of this with glee. In fact, the situation stresses me out a lot. But it is simply the grim reality of the situation, and the result of letting this ferment for the last 30 years. More denial, more attempts to pretend it is not happening, will only continue fermenting this situation into an even fouler brew, and one that is even more bitter to drink. And I am quite sure that, Trump or China pulling out a miracle aside, we will eventually drink it in full.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 29 2017, @12:02PM
It should have been obvious. North Korea has been diligently working on its programs.
1. You can't assassinate NK scientists like you can easily do in Iran.
2. Everything NK wants to do was basically perfected in the 1950s. Now they have powerful computers capable of aiding the work, and whatever information can be gleaned from public sources, intrusion into government computer systems, or simply handed to them by China or Russia.
There was an indication recently that the Obama administration was doing something [thediplomat.com] - such as cyberattacks or something more exotic - to cripple individual missile tests. But that is a short-term strategy that has limited effectiveness against one of the most paranoid regimes in the world.
So while rocket science is somewhat hard and NK has limited resources, it is treading proven ground. The general idea [wikipedia.org] of how to create a hydrogen bomb can be found on Wikipedia. They'll miniaturize and attach those suckers to ballistic missiles eventually. Maybe they'll even throw a bone to the other hungry dogs in the world and release the plans on the net.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @01:31PM (3 children)
so what's your solution?
send the US army over there, whatever the consequences?
how would you then explain the destruction of seoul and a bunch of other stuff to the world?
how would you explain the thousands/tens of thousands of US casualties to US voters?
US citizens believe in "innocent until proven guilty".
North Korea is certainly innocent of using weapons of mass destruction.
they are certainly guilty of making threats.
I personally do not have a solution.
but you don't seem to have one either.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday November 29 2017, @08:30PM
You don't have to succeed to break the law. Threatening to murder or attempting murder is also a crime. If someone is credibly threatening to kill you and we don't do anything until they actually do kill you then that is a huge mistake.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:59PM (1 child)
Yeah, it sucks. But we have honestly tried diplomacy and sanctions for decades to get North Korea to give up on nuclear weapons. We gave them food during their famine. We tried multi-party talks with China and other nations involved. We really, really tried. But that failed, because North Korea was determined to get nuclear weapons.
So we do have to take military action. If we don't, innocent civilians in the US, Japan, and South Korea will be looking at a crazy lunatic who's got his finger on the nuclear trigger. It's also, far more than chasing hapless Islamic jihadis in a random desert, the definition of why people who join the military sign up. They do it to defend their friends and families from bad guys, not assassinate individuals by drones. Kim Jong Un and his armies are bad guys. They are the archetypical bad guys.
As far as explaining the thousands of US casualties to US voters, it will be a lot easier than explaining the millions of casualties from a nuclear strike because Washington failed to act.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:29PM
The long con finally revealed. Start WW3 or your puppy gets it! I highly doubt your "archetypal baddies" argument. NK has lots of problems, and a megalomaniac dictator, but I think it is pretty clear why they want nukes. For protection! Korea already got invaded, then split in two, and nukes are about the only way to guarantee their own defense.
I have a 3rd option. Nuclear disarmament across the globe. Perhaps if the major powers give up on nukes then NK won't feel like such an inferior country. Win win in the long run.