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posted by martyb on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:08AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:59PM (1 child)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:59PM (#603205) Journal

    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?

    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.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:29PM (#603214)

    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.