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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:32PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:32PM (#603215)

    I guess time will tell, but if you think they are going to nuke the US just because they can then you have lost all sense. Never figured you for a war monger, preemptive invasion will 100% start WW3 and will result in a lot worse destruction than even a few ICBMs.

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:33AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:33AM (#603309) Journal

    I'm not a war monger, but I'm not a pacifist either. You fight when you must. This is one of those times. North Korea is a real threat the way Iraq and Iran never were.

    History condemns Neville Chamberlain for appeasing the early ambitions of the Third Reich, because they wanted to avoid a repeat of the Great War. It made the cost so much higher than it might have been. This is such a moment. The longer we delay the higher the price will be.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.