Maybe. But I keep wondering if they aren’t launching these things with no payload at all. Put a bomb on top, and it won’t have near the range.
ICBMs have an extremely high mass ratio so that wouldn’t really work. Guessing they use a dummy warhead with same weight and balance as real one.
That is exactly what I think. North Korea still can't lob a nuke yet.
Considering how expensive it is to launch, regardless of what is carried as payload, the NorKs would be even stupider than usual to not at least use a dummy weight. They don’t have enough rockets to throw away one just to make it look like they’ve got long range rockets. They need every datum of telemetry with a legitimate payload weight that they can get, if they’re going to get their money’s worth out of the few test launches they can manage.
Not a good assumption to make.
Intel should never assume they can predict what an enemy WILL DO, but only what the enemy CAN DO, and then the commander prepares to defend against that.