Posted on 11/30/2017 3:42:14 PM PST by BenLurkin
The intercontinental ballistic missile that North Korea launched on Wednesday appears to be significantly larger and more powerful than previous versions, according to independent analysts.
"It's a monster," says Vipin Narang, an associate professor at MIT who tracks the North's nuclear capabilities. The missile is so much larger than previous versions that Narang suspects it could carry a powerful thermonuclear weapon, regardless of whether the North has managed to make a compact, missile-friendly version.
"They wouldn't have to miniaturize much," Narang says. Other analysts are less sure about what the missile could carry and where it could reach. David Wright, a rocket expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the devil remains in the details surrounding the rocket's engines and the weight of the warhead it carries.
Still, he believes that this missile gives the North Koreans the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead to U.S. soil. "I think at this point they could," he says.
Earlier this year, the North tested a massive nuclear weapon with a yield of 100-600 kilotons — roughly 7 to 40 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The size and weight of that device is unknown, but there were reports in August that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency believed North Korea has had success miniaturizing some of its lower-yield nuclear weapons.
The new ICBM was launched early Wednesday local time. It shot up to an altitude of 4,000 kilometers and flew for 53 minutes before plunging into the Sea of Japan. After the launch, North Korean media declared the nation had successfully tested a new "Hwasong-15" ICBM.
Based on the height and duration of Wednesday's flight, Wright believes the Hwasong-15 could travel 13,000 kilometers. That would put all of the continental U.S. within range. He cautions that the weight of a real warhead could cause the missile's range to shrink considerably — but even by his most conservative estimate, the missile could hit cities along the U.S. West Coast.
The North has been known to give new names to missiles that have only minor modifications, but in this case "the rocket is clearly something new," Markus Schiller, an aerospace engineer with the German company ST Analytics, said in an email.
The North previously conducted two tests of an ICBM called the Hwasong-14 in July. In addition to appearing to be far larger than that missile, the Hwasong-15 also looks like it has more powerful engines, Schiller says. He also believes the North has learned how to "gimbal" the thrust chambers on the bottom of the engine — an advanced way to steer the missile that North Korea has never used before.
Schiller says he believes the missile could accommodate a payload of 2 metric tons or even more.
The missile's nose is so large that Narang believes it might even be able to hold decoys that could fool U.S. missile defenses.
Even with these advances, many questions remain about the North's missiles and nukes. It's unclear whether the country has perfected re-entry technology that would allow a warhead to survive the final leg of its journey toward its target. Nor is it known how the North's nuclear weapons would tolerate the stresses of being launched aboard a rocket.
But Narang says this new missile unambiguously puts the U.S. within range. And given what's known about the rest of North Korea's weapons program, he says, it's better to err on the side of caution.
He says, "We have to assume that this thing can park a warhead on the Eastern Seaboard."
“Track KMS-4 at n2yo.com and be sure to enlarge of the map, so you can see where it’s at in relationship to the United States, and how it crosses the United States. “
Will it reach Manhattan?
I'm sure that the X37B et. al. have collected extensive nuclear emissions (if any) data from those satellites and ground-based observations have derived mass from orbital data. In other words, we know whether or not a nuclear payload is present to a high degree of confidence. Pretty straightforward to rule it out if the satellites are light weight and quiet emissions-wise. Rumors that our equipment can detect even the most heavily shielded nuclear materials using multipass scanning technologies.
That this may be true makes me say I am not taking it ‘lightly’
BUT
The people ALARMING us about this missile are the same ones that told us in 1990 that The Republican Guard of Iraq was a true battle hardened outfit that would make short shrift of the fat and lazy US forces who had lost the will to fight..
Well ‘Stormin Norman’ and Company sort of didn’t read the headlines or something.
Remember the CIA was instrumental in getting out the word about the ‘Republican Guard’
Of course the Average Lib and D never ‘feared’ the Republican Guard and the US forces had them beaten into the dust before the LIBs could change their name like they hijacked ‘Blue States’ from ‘us’....
The question is who is supplying the Norks with these missiles?
“I say destroy this regime and their missile and nuke capacity and do it now. Use nukes if needed. “
Easy for you to say . You don’t live in Kyushu , Japan very close to to Korea , as I do , and won’t have to deal with the fallout from the blast .
"Doctor"
"Doctor"
"Doctor"
"Doctor"
"Doctor"....
Learn the real dangers America faces in “A Nation Forsaken – EMP: The Escalating Threat of an American Catastrophe.”“Glad I’m not sick!” - Bob Hope
The bigger the missile, the easier to shoot down :)
Maybe he could aim at a San Francisco courthouse...just testing...
Works for me.
About zero.
The way a nuke works, you have to bring together quite(!) precisely 2 or more subcritical masses of fissile material. The timing and mating of surfaces have to be "right". Or, one can (again quite precisely, including the timing of the charges used) compress a subcritical mass of fissile material into a denser critical mass. Doing either with an explosion external to the device is virtually impossible.
That said, we do not need to "blow them to pieces". A little shrapnel (at near orbital velocities), or holing the device in any critical area with a high power laser, would do the job, as would a small EMP as you suggest.) The Wikipedia articles on Little Boy and Fat Man are quite worth reading, to gain understanding of the basic technology -- considerably improved in 2017, of course.
This brings up an interesting point.
Why have the Norks decided to push a direct threat to the US? In the past, their blackmail could be backed by the threat of pounding Seoul, or, use of WMD relatively locally (South Korea or perhaps Japan.) Yes, we would pound them to ashes if they ever carried out the threat, but, in the past, the threat itself was enough for the Norks to succeed in their blackmail.
Developing a strike capability against the US mainland will not “deter” the US unless the Norks believe their capability to hit the US can survive a strike by us. That is very unlikely. What IS more likely is the possibility of a pre-emptive U.S. & allies strike, or for China to increasingly realize that the benefits of its support of the North may come to be outweighed by the risks.
Is it possible that the Norks are simply desperate, perhaps in part because the Allies’ defenses are sufficient, or becoming sufficient, to blunt “conventional” and perhaps even local WMD offense by the North? Keep in mind the Allies’ anti-missile defenses, considerable (and competent) counter battery capabilities, and that the Allies can put over 1000 planes into the area near Seoul (along the DMZ and north of it, where all that Nork artillery is located.)
Incredibly fascinating! Of course it is all theoretical..but so was the A bomb until Trinity.
“Is it possible that the Norks are simply desperate, perhaps in part because the Allies’ defenses are sufficient, or becoming sufficient, to blunt “conventional” and perhaps even local WMD offense by the North? Keep in mind the Allies’ anti-missile defenses, considerable (and competent) counter battery capabilities, and that the Allies can put over 1000 planes into the area near Seoul (along the DMZ and north of it, where all that Nork artillery is located.)”
A very thoughtful post for sure. The problem though is that these thousands of artillery pieces are what might be called dumb weapons. And, each piece has already been zeroed in on pre-assigned grid coordinates to fire upon. And, once the “fire” command is given each arty piece can get off four rounds within a minute. So, even though we (U.S. and South Koreans) may know where most perhaps even all of the arty pieces are located it would be impossible to destroy them before they lay down dozens of volleys on Seoul. So, aside from our responding to a first strike by NK I’m thinking the Chinese must be persuaded to assinate the little fat guy and replace him with someone that they can control. Sadly, other than an internal coup, which doesn’t appear to be in the cards, I don’t see a bloodless solution for us and our allies.
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