Posted on 04/18/2012 10:17:25 AM PDT by MindBender26
Details of a new North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) surfaced this week with a report from Asia that U.S. spy agencies spotted what appears to be a larger long-range version (of the supposed satellite launch rocket which recently had a failed launch.)
South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted government sources as saying the new missile was seen at a missile-development center in Pyongyang, but noted that it is not clear if the missile is a functional system or a mockup.
The April 3 report said the new missile is about 130 feet long, compared to the estimated 100-foot-long Taepodong-2 missile photographed recently on a launchpad.
Asked about the new missile, Pentagon spokesman George Little on Tuesday did not directly comment.
“I would just merely say that this is something we’re working with our partners on,” he said.
Recent U.S. intelligence reports mentioned in Congress have said North Korea is developing a new road-mobile ICBM that can reach targets in the United States.
A CIA report to Congress made public recently stated that “North Korea continues to develop short-range and longer-range ballistic missiles.”
The new road-mobile missile was first reported in this space in December and confirmed March 2 by Adm. Robert F. Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command.
“There is development within North Korea of a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile system that we’ve observed,” he said last month.
The mobile missile is “advertised to be significant in terms of its range capability,” Adm. Willard added.
The missile is more difficult to counter because mobile missiles can be hidden in caves and are set up more easily and fired more rapidly than North Korea’s less-sophisticated liquid-fueled missiles, like the Taepodong-2.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
No, that is not what happened at all.
In special weapons, one of the hardest things to do is to keep all the pieces together so all the fissionable elements to so, and not just lose shape and start to be blown apart in the first few picoseconds... and as a result you lose the vast majority of your fissionable materiel.
It’s not that much of a problem with very crude devices, such as the pie and wedge Little Boy, but when you try to make the warhead smaller, and current weapon-sized, it was beyond the NORKs capability in their first test.
It was a nuclear (splitting atoms chain reaction) explosion, but a very weak “sloppy” one.
>>No, that is not what happened at all.
Damn, I’m glad we have a freeper in North Korea who knows all this stuff.
Nah, it doesn’t take that, just a SSBI.
WOW! Now that is a really big firecracker. I wonder how well they blow up?
We’ll see if the N. Koreans make their rocket out of stronger wood this time.
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