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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 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]