[Common Tator]

The author apparently does not understand that small nukes are much harder to make than large nukes.

What you do not understand is this scenerio does not depend on large nukes with lots of destructive power.

The story is not talking about a single nuke that could destroy the city of Washington. He is talking about a small nuke that would destroy the White House. It takes two more nukes to get the capital building and the pentagon.

Making big nukes small is hard. Making little nukes little is not nearly so hard.

[Rca2000]

Not too mention-- once a nation has mastered the making of small, but powerful nukes, the next logical step is to use one as a fission primary and combine it with a fusion secondary of one of more stages, producing a thermonuclear weapon and thereby multiplying the yield many times, usually 10 times or more, without too much of a size or weight increase.

I would hazard to guess that , at the moment, NK is in possession of a VERY crude form of a fission weapon of large size and very small yield, compared to size, fuel use and weight. To produce a small nuclear bomb of around 3K.T. that could be fitted on a cruise missile that could fly over 1000 miles or more,(the warhead would have to weigh under 1000 pounds or less, most likely), they will need some VERY difficult advances in nuclear know-how, boosting techniques, neutron generation techniques, very pure plutonium, etc. Things like that took this country a couple of decades to accomplish. Of course, this is why they test in the first place. Further tests will enable them to improve their design, resulting in a smaller package with higher yield, until they have a deliverable weapon.

That is, of course, unless they have somehow gotten some of our technology "handed to them", in the past, by the previous administration.