Posted on 04/08/2015 6:00:14 AM PDT by pabianice
WASHINGTON — North Korea has an operational road-mobile missile that could carry nuclear weapons to the United States, according to the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command.
The KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile was first paraded in North Korea in 2012. Many analysts suspected at the time that the missiles on display were mock-ups and doubted that the country had actually developed the weapon.
But on Tuesday, Adm. Bill Gortney, the head of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, told reporters at the Pentagon that he thinks Pyongyang has achieved a breakthrough.
“We assess that it’s operational today, and so we practice to go against that,” he said.
Gortney said North Korea has not yet tested the missile, and he declined to explain why he thinks the missile is ready to go.
Analogous to the ‘missile gap’?
/s
They can’t even get their tanks to work. If the Norks parade anything, it’s because they want to sell it.
WHAT .. the Admiral is telling the Pentagon REPORTERS ..????
This has to be some kind of joke or else the Admiral is an idiot.
Sell it ..?? IRAN ..??
Ping
While I know it is disastrous to underestimate your adversary, and usually I err on the side of caution... Given North Korea's track record with IRBMs, and ICBMs... I don't think these are a threat - yet. Until there are 2 or 3 successful test launches I don't think they have the kinks worked out.
As for the warhead, I don't think they've ever tested a re-entry vehicle. It is one thing to create a science experiment in a cave and have it go critical. It is quite another to engineer a functional warhead that can withstand the rigors of long term storage (think corrosion/environment), launch (shock & vibration, many Gs, heating), space flight (cooling, radiation), and re-entry (more G, shock, vibration, tremendous heating), and still fuse and detonate properly in that delicate dance required for a sustained chain reaction.
Not that I think we should discount the North Koreans nor the Iranians. They are coming for us (CONUS), our forces deployed abroad (with shorter ranged, less challenging systems), and our allies. Given the amount of lead time we need to develop and deploy systems it is necessary that we take this seriously and take action now to develop and test our defenses. While I'm all for developing a sense of urgency here, I don't think exaggerating the immediate threat is the way to go. I dunno, maybe the Admiral knows more about the politics of getting things moving so that our defenses can be out in front of the offensive developments.
I seem to remember one Baraq Hussein 0bama fighting tooth and nail against our Anti-Ballistic Missile System, which could knock this thing down.
I posted this on another thread. Maybe related.
Recent declassification of EMP studies by the U.S. government has begun to draw attention to this dire threat. Rogue nations such as North Korea (and possibly Iran) will soon match Russia and China and have the primary ingredients for an EMP attack: simple ballistic missiles such as Scuds that could be launched from a freighter near our shores; space-launch vehicles able to loft low-earth-orbit satellites; and simple low-yield nuclear weapons that can generate gamma rays and fireballs.
August 2014
They only have to make one work, one time.
One might blackout a small village in Montana but that’s about it.
Interesting
Thought you might like to see this.
ping
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