Posted on 04/29/2017 7:45:14 AM PDT by mandaladon
Retired CIA Director James Woolsey said Friday that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un "may have more up his sleeve" than firing a nuclear missile at the United States.
"It is a little worse than that," Woolsey, 75, a former Navy undersecretary, told Don Lemon on CNN. "They can launch a satellite into orbit.
"That's actually easier to do than to hit a target on the other side of the Earth.
"If that satellite contains a small nuclear weapon — and it is detonated over some place, say the United States, it can be devastating to the electric grid.
"So, we've got a bigger problem," Woolsey said. "He may be able to detonate something inside a satellite that is in orbit — and that is extremely troubling."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
He’d be smarter to simply rely on subversion.
Kim has a ready made legion of supporters in the American educational system. Particularly at the universities where the professors are guaranteed to side with North Korea in any conflict against the US.
No he’s not going to do that. He’ll hold it until he can deliver an h-bomb by air. If he spends his wad just disabling our grid then he’s finished.
We have to hope that our DOD has developed and deployed a rail gun system. It might explain why they can’t seem to get a missile out of their own air space lately...
That’s old-school thinking. With an EMP weapon, you don’t need the sophisticated targeting or re-entry technology. You set the weapon off in space. There are estimates that up to 90% of the US population could die in a year. That is FAR more than a single H-Bomb hitting a single US city.
He is far more likely to try an EMP attack. He already has two satellites in orbit that pass south-to-north over the US every day.
Could a railgun hit a fast moving target like that?
1) DPRK hasn’t even demonstrated the ability to launch an ICBM without a warhead.
2) Even if they had, they’d still have to demonstrate the ability to launch an ICBM with a warhead.
3) Even if they had, they’d still have to demonstrate the ability to miniaturize their nuclear weapons enough to have nuclear warheads for their ICBMs.
4) Even if they had, launching a nuclear ICBM is easier than launching a nuclear satellite; ICBMs are on suborbital trajectories, which are lower energy than orbital trajectories.
5) AEGIS has already been demonstrated to have the ability to shoot satellites out of low-Earth orbit. If the US suspected that the DPRK might be up to something like that, they would shoot it out of the sky. And any and all DPRK satellites regardless of purpose would be expected to be shot down simultaneous with the US launching a first strike.
I read a book recently where this was the plot. I can’t remember the title.
EMPs are set off in the atmosphere not space. It must re-enter to be effective.
The “more up his sleeve” is almost certainly cyber warfare. Not against military targets, but softer targets like banks, mercantile exchanges, electrical distribution networks, municipal governments, and other civilian installations.
Wal-Mart is not exempt from this kind of attack.
Kim just has to get “lucky” only once...
—
If dead is lucky, then you’re right. He would cease to exist in short order.
I really don’t understand what motivates them to want to attack the USA.
I doubt that what he has is really useful as an EMP. He might partially knock out our grid temporarily. But he’d go down irrespective.
That said we can’t let this go on much longer. He’s a psychopath.
EMP blasts can occur at 40 - 400 kilometers / 24 - 240 miles altitude.
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with an altitude between 160 kilometers (99 mi) and 2,000 kilometers (1,200 mi).
So you can detonate an EMP weapon in LEO at 160 - 400 km. That is most assuredly outside the atmosphere and in orbit.
You can park a satellite at a higher altitude, then bring it down to a lower altitude for detonation when you want to attack. The satellite orbit won’t degrade at the higher altitude where it is parked.
This is FAR easier than building a re-entry vehicle.
The NORKs have had significant EMP technology transferred to them, BTW.
“There are estimates that up to 90% of the US population could die in a year.”
I absolutely do not believe that. I say pure BS.
You all are not thinking low tech enough. A nuke inside an airplane would be a less effective but much more likely scenario. Just as a nuke inside a ship at a US port.
We should disable THEIR grid before they even try to do it to us.
Oh wait, they don't have much of grid. My bad.
No one even talks about their CBW capabilities and they do have them.
“I really don’t understand what motivates them....”
You have shown that you are sane and not evil.
Explode it 125 miles above Colorado and most of the United States goes dark...
Agree we can't let this go on much longer. With the exception of Kim's assassination and taking out most of his military leadership at the same time, there are simply no good options that I can see.
A war on the Korean Peninsula would devastate South Korea and now that Kim's threatened the Chinese involving them in a war on the Korean Peninsula (or on China's own mainland, should that happen) would kill millions.
Yes he's got to be stopped. Aside from assassination trying to figure out the "least bad option" is troubling.
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