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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Cheryl Rofer Guest Post on What is Going on in the DPRK Right Now: Fireworks

Cheryl Rofer Guest Post on What is Going on in the DPRK Right Now: Fireworks

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(and a mushroom cloud hat too!)

Sunday is the anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the father of North Korea and grandfather of its current president, Kim Jong Un. The North Koreans promise a big event and may have prepared some fireworks for the celebration. Reports of activity at their Punggye-ri nuclear test site suggest that the biggest firework will be underground.

Sunday is also Easter for Christians and part of Passover for Jews. North Korea likes to intrude on others’ holidays. It’s something of a tradition. And this year brings the added frisson of showing up an American president whose bluster approaches Kim Jong Un’s.

The New York Times has an extensive article on the preparations. 38 North has better overhead photos.

North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests and is working toward a nuclear weapon small enough to be carried on their missiles, which they also have been testing and improving.

The way in which this test could be different from the previous five is that an American carrier group is heading toward Korea. Its purpose has not been stated, but it is obviously part of the Trump administration’s desire to show off its military strength. There is nothing it could do, short of starting a war, to stop a nuclear test.

I’ve been thinking about the estimates of North Korean nuclear weapons. The common way to estimate is to take the estimate of fissile material, an estimate of what is needed for a weapon, and divide the second into the first. But there are other considerations. I’ve worked some of them out and come to the conclusion that North Korea doesn’t have as many nukes as sometimes is claimed. My best guess is a half-dozen or fewer. But even that could cause a lot of damage.

Cheryl has indicated she’ll hang around in comments for about an hour to answer whatever questions you all might have.

Reader Interactions

160Comments

  1. 1.

    SuzieC

    Soon will have Navy son based at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Your views as to danger that NK poses to Hawaii?

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SuzieC: I can’t speak for Cheryl, but as someone who has worked on some stuff for the Army in regard to Asia Pacific issues, I think negligible. The DPRK is still trying to build a missile that can hit US bases in Japan. They have yet to have a successful test of one of those. Hitting Hawaii is a big stretch for them.

  3. 3.

    Viva BrisVegas

    Isn’t it true that North Korea could level Seoul in an afternoon with conventional artillery and missiles?

    If so, does NK having deliverable nukes really change the calculus of risk all that much? Since the primary target is always going to be the South.

  4. 4.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    are there, for lack of a better word, “doves” in the NK government? people who can work with the Chinese toward deescalation? I’m assuming the Chinese want to deescalate. From what I’m hearing, it sounds like Xi has figured out how to flatter the only president we’ve got, as Molly I used to say about Bush 2

  5. 5.

    Cheryl Rofer

    It’s hard to say. I’m not a specialist in missile technology, but I do follow the folks at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (@ArmsControlWonk and @mhanham on Twitter), who are very good at analyzing North Korean photos of their tests. I think even they would hesitate to say, though.

    It’s my understanding that the North Koreans don’t have missiles that can reliably reach that far yet. And I haven’t checked the great circle distance, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s shorter to Seattle than to Hawaii.

  6. 6.

    SuzieC

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks. That is also what my son tells me. He scoffs at the idea that NK could pose any kind of a threat. As his mother (only child) I worry my head off.

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Adam L Silverman: The problem will be fallout.

    Cheryl, thank you for posting! You mentioned that they probably don’t have viable warheads for missiles, and I imagine that a dozen spy satellites are watching NK ports for any small vessels on the move towards Busan or Japan on suicide missions.

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I guess this is as good a thread as any (don’t recall that it’s been mentioned today) that FDR died on this date in 1945, and Harry Truman — this first, and so far only POTUS to order nuclear bombings — became president.

  9. 9.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SuzieC: I understand. I was supposed to go to US Army Pacific as the Cultural Advisor in late 2014, but the sequester killed the funding. So I’ve yet to get boots on the ground time in the AOR. That said, I think he will be fine. If he’s working on the beach in Hawaii the risk is exceedingly low. If he’s going to be afloat it goes up a bit, but I don’t think by much yet. And regardless of what the President may or may not think, the PRC leadership isn’t going to just let Kim target US naval vessels. That would be very, very bad for business.

  10. 10.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Viva BrisVegas: At the moment, that is correct. Nuking Seoul would be qualitatively different from destroying it conventionally, because of the international expectations (norms may be too strong a word) that nukes will not be used. And there is the question of whether an American president would feel that nuking North Korea in return would be appropriate, with the further question of how China and Russia would respond to that.

  11. 11.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: If there are doves in the North Korean government, they have no public visibility, and any attempts on their part to communicate with the outside world would probably get the locked in a small room on the business end of antiaircraft guns.

  12. 12.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Cheryl, thank you once again for hanging out with this pack of jackals. I know your specialty is chemistry, or chemical engineering, or something, and not clinical psychiatric disorders, but do you have any views you feel comfortable sharing with us about the mental/emotional stability of Kim Jong-Un, or lack thereof?

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @SuzieC: I can relate to this, because when I was stationed in Korea in ’87, my parents saw news reports of demonstrations in Seoul, and they knew I was in Seoul, and they got worried. The thing was, if you were there on the ground, you could walk a block away from the demonstrations and the pepper gas and it was life as usual. In fact, both the demonstrators and the police would wait for the TV news crews to get all set up before the action began.

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    That’s more what I’m concerned about in CA — fallout and other similar aftereffects, not the (slim) chance that Kim could manage to lob a missile across the Pacific. If anything, some kind of dirty bomb in a cargo container would be a far more realistic attack, and even that’s pretty far-fetched.

  15. 15.

    Jeffro

    Any thoughts from either Cheryl or Adam on how this situation eventually, ever, gets resolved in the long run? Do we bribe NK’s leaders into abdicating and heading for the Bahamas? Carpet bomb the North with blue jeans until their people rise up in capitalist envy/fury? Work with the Chinese on some sort of strategic initiative across multiple decades in a thoughtf…bwah ha ha, whoa there, almost got carried away for a sec…

    …but seriously?

  18. 18.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @SiubhanDuinne: Short and long answers, the latter born of frustration.

    Short answer: I think Kim Jung Un is quite mentally and emotionally stable. He is working in the service of his family’s interests, to stay in power and thus keep North Korea safe.

    Long answer: The convention for doing analyses like this is to assume sanity and emotional stability on the part of heads of government. Declaring them insane is like throwing in a wild card, and the end of responsible analysis. But what happens when a head of government displays actions that are not explainable otherwise. We haven’t had many of those; I wouldn’t even put Stalin in that category. But Trump has been so arbitrary that analysis is almost impossible. At this point, he’s turned 180 degrees from many of his campaign promises. Will he turn again? Stay tuned, but rational analysis is very difficult.

  19. 19.

    Bill Arnold

    That cake picture never gets old. ( a quick search found some story )
    Is there any rough consensus yet on a timeline minimum for a NK-deliverable NK thermonuclear (not just boosted) device?

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne: If, God forbid, North Korea lobbed a nuclear warhead at either the South or Japan, fallout here in California would be a pretty minor concern. It does travel that far, but is really really diluted and dispersed by the time t reaches the other side of the Pacific.

    Look at the the size of the area seriously impacted by Cheronobyl, which released far more radioactive crap than a warhead would. It was big, but it wasn’t five or seven thousand miles across big.

  23. 23.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @David: Thanks!

    @SuzieC: Ah, notice I said “how the American president feels.” And the 59 cruise missiles for Syria seem to have been about feels, perhaps Ivanka’s. See my answer at #18. Damfino.

  24. 24.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Bill Arnold: We know very little about North Korea’s progress in nuclear weapons design. They displayed what they claim was their nuclear weapon a year or so ago. Folks in the field irreverently called it the “disco ball” design. That article has some insights.

    North Korea has been very good at containing their nuclear tests. If they weren’t so good, some isotopes would leak out, giving more information about how they configure their tests. But we don’t have that information, just the seismic magnitudes. From those, it looks like they are perfecting one design, because the yields seem to be similar. However, some recent calculations suggest that the tests could be more deeply buried, which would mean that the yields are larger.

    They tried to sell some lithium-6 a while back, which is a component of thermonuclear weapons. Undoubtedly they would like that – they claimed it a couple of tests back, but the consensus seems to be that it was boosting.

    Like so much about North Korea, we just don’t know.

  26. 26.

    efgoldman

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    there is the question of whether an American president would feel that nuking North Korea in return would be appropriate

    There is what an American president might do, and then there’s what Apricot Asswipe might do. They are not necessarily the same thing – not the same thing at all.

  27. 27.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    The convention for doing analyses like this is to assume sanity and emotional stability on the part of heads of government.

    Huh. That’s very interesting. So is everything else you said.

  28. 28.

    Yarrow

    Could some of the generals Trump has put in place overrule him on use of nukes on NK? Technically I know he’s the Commander-in-Chief, but if they knew it was a really bad idea would they–could they–refuse?

  29. 29.

    jl

    Scary thing is that today Trump indicated Xi cooled his jets with supposedly true facts that gosh golly, apparently no one knew before, indicating things wouldn’t be so slam dunk easy.

    But that is today. With Trump, tomorrow is tomorrow. Those dumb shits on Fox and Friends may hold world peace in the balance over the next couple of days.

    Edit: OTOH, a guy like Mattis, wrt to N and S Korea, must have a detail of advisers shadowing Trump 24/7 on this. I imagine tRump’s central casting generals know what a complete nightmare a serious war scare on the Korean Peninsula would be, let alone actual fighting.

  30. 30.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    We know very little about North Korea’s progress in nuclear weapons design.

    Isn’t the consensus that they bought a lot of it from A.Q. Khan?

  33. 33.

    wu ming

    do we have any idea about the factional lay of the land inside the north korean military/government/family and relatives of kim jong-un? i know i don’t know, but does anyone on our side have a clue? my assumption is that the chinese probably have some idea of who tends to align with whom in pyongyang, but i’m not sure if our government is willing to just assume it’s unknowable the way all media reporting on the topic seems to do.

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Yarrow: They would have three options: 1. Comply with the order. 2. Decline to comply with the order and resign, 3. Refuse to comply with what they consider to be an illegal order. The third option would create a “Situation.”

  37. 37.

    jl

    @Yarrow: They can certainly refuse an order. They can also be relieved until some officer is willing to follow an unlawful or unconstitutional, wrt to the US, order or violate international law.

  38. 38.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Yarrow: Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at Stevens Institute of Technology, has been looking into this question. The answer he got shocked him and some of the rest of us. It appears that the president, all by himself, can give the missile launchers a “GO.” Some of us were reading some of the statements about it to mean that the Secretary of Defense is in the chain of command, but apparently not. People I have talked to say that the people who turn the keys are trained to a point where they will not refuse the order.

    That link goes to Alex’s latest post and a podcast. He has done two previous posts linked there as well.

  40. 40.

    SgrAstar

    Cheryl, thank you so much for doing this! My question is, to what extent do you think that our nuclear sub-equipped “armada” is destabilizing/randomizing this situation? Does the presence of our heavily armed carrier group take this situation any closer to the ignition point? Like other Juicers I’m wondering if our service chiefs would actually follow presidential orders to escalate the confrontation. Help!

  42. 42.

    Suzanne

    @wu ming: I also wonder how aware the North Korean leadership is or has any good strategic alliances besides the Chinese. And China doesn’t seem to be too fond of them.

  43. 43.

    burnspbesq

    More to the point, at least this week: does DPRK have any weapons systems capable of plausibly threatening a carrier battle group?

  44. 44.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Gin & Tonic: The fact that they have conducted five tests suggests that if they started with the rumored Khan design, they are trying to upgrade it. We don’t know what those five tests have taught them.

    [Sorry so much of this is “we don’t know.” North Korea is like that.]

  46. 46.

    jl

    @Cheryl Rofer: Maybe they could tell him that they hooked up the football to his cell phone and he just has to push the big red button. Then they could start showing old atomic war movies on the TV.

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @dmsilev:

    Scientists have been able to detect radiation from Fukushima in California and in fish in the Pacific Ocean. It’s at low levels, but it’s detectable. So would an actual thermonuclear bomb produce less radiation than the Fukushima meltdown did?

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    @dmsilev:

    Look at the the size of the area seriously impacted by Cheronobyl, which released far more radioactive crap than a warhead would. It was big, but it wasn’t five or seven thousand miles across big.

    Fukushima would be an even better example, because on a global scale it’s quite close to Korea. People were able to detect radiation from it here in California, but only because they were specifically looking; the effects weren’t something you’d notice from something like public health data.

  52. 52.

    JGabriel

    efgoldman:

    There is what an American president might do, and then there’s what Apricot Asswipe might do. They are not necessarily the same thing – not the same thing at all.

    Unfortunately, barring impeachment, for the next four years they are the same thing.

  54. 54.

    Cheryl Rofer

    To the comments on fallout, I agree that whatever would get across the Pacific to the US would be trivial, unless there were a highly unusual weather pattern. Japan would have more of a problem. The greatest danger from nuking North Korea would be the reactions of China and Russia. They probably would not be moved to using their nukes, but they would be very unhappy about it.

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    @Viva BrisVegas: StratFor says the DPRK’s artillery is over-stated:

    Tube and Rocket Artillery

    The biggest anticipated cost of a North Korean artillery barrage in response to an attack would be the at least partial destruction of Seoul. But the volume of fire that the North can direct against the South Korean capital is limited by some important factors. Of the vast artillery force deployed by the North along the border, only a small portion — Koksan 170-mm self-propelled guns, as well as 240-mm and 300-mm multiple launch rocket systems — are capable of actually reaching Seoul. Broadly speaking, the bulk of Pyongyang’s artillery can reach only into the northern border area of South Korea or the northern outskirts of Seoul.

    All forms of North Korean artillery have problems with volume and effectiveness of fire, but those issues are often more pronounced for the longer-range systems. Problems include the high malfunction rate of indigenous ammunition, poorly trained artillery crews, and a reluctance to expend critical artillery assets by exposing their positions.

    Based on the few artillery skirmishes that have occurred, roughly 25 percent of North Korean shells and rockets fail to detonate on target. Even allowing for improvements and assuming a massive counterstrike artillery volley would be more successful, a failure rate as high as 15 percent would take a significant bite out of the actual explosive power on target. The rate of fire and accuracy of North Korean artillery systems is also expected to be subpar. This belief is founded on the observably poor performance of North Korean artillery crews during past skirmishes and exercises. Though inaccuracy is less noticeable in a tactical sense — especially as part of a “countervalue attack,” where civilian areas are targeted — at the higher level an artillery retaliation rapidly becomes a numbers game.

    Ineffective crews also rapidly curtail the potential for severe damage. Rate of fire is crucial to the survivability of artillery systems — the name of the game is to get the most rounds on target in the shortest period of time, lest your position be identified and destroyed before the fire mission is complete. Poor training translates to a greatly reduced volume of fire and a painfully limited duration of effectiveness.

    A new Korean war would be a disaster, but it’s not clear that the DPRK has a strong hand to play.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  57. 57.

    Yarrow

    @Cheryl Rofer: Wow. That’s…not good. Maybe if we survive the catastrophic Trump presidency we could change the laws governing this situation.

    We need a lot of laws to cover what are mere norms that all previous modern presidents (and candidates) followed. A lot of laws.

  58. 58.

    efgoldman

    @burnspbesq:

    does DPRK have any weapons systems capable of plausibly threatening a carrier battle group?

    There was a thread late at night shortly after the announcement of repositioning was made. Adam posited that the carrier is a sitting duck for a flotilla of small boats. I believe he said the carrier or other ships could be “hulled” without much difficulty (relatibvely).

  59. 59.

    Corner Stone

    @Another Scott: Woah, woah, woah. StratFor can go and suck their own dicks. They are a bunch of Israeli first disinfo cuck mofos.
    Just saying. Treat them like Bibi was telling you about problems with talks about settlements.

  61. 61.

    efgoldman

    @Mnemosyne:

    It’s at low levels, but it’s detectable. So would an actual thermonuclear bomb produce less radiation than the Fukushima meltdown did?

    I think its past time for you and G to build a bunker in your back yard.

  62. 62.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Another Scott: More than three volleys from a firing point and you guaranty counter-battery fires. Could be hit after fewer. Guns have to move quickly. In exercises, I’ve been left to fire six volleys from a firing point. Nice posthumous BSM and PH for my parents.

  63. 63.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: In a confined space, like the Shat al Arab or the Straits of Hormuz, yes. In the Sea of Japan or Bay of Korea, not so much.

  64. 64.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Yarrow: A number of people and organizations are urging that the rules for using nuclear weapons be changed. A fast response is needed because missiles from Russia would get here in about a half-hour. When you go through the entire timeline, the president has about four minutes to make a decision. Changing it will require some coordination with Russia. Arms control, maybe eliminating ground-based missiles, would help.

    My own feeling is that it is crazy that the US and Russia are still targeting each other. But nobody listens to me.

  66. 66.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Barry McCaffrey, whom I’m liking less and less the last couple of weeks, says we have to build a “defensive system” to guard against NK nukes, that aren’t going anywhere. I assume he means Star Wars?

    anybody manage to sit through the Bartiromo interview? I kind of want to hear trump pronounce the word “armada”. I’m sure it was a full Baldwin

  67. 67.

    Corner Stone

    @Adam L Silverman: It’s not just mine but I have been paying a fuckton for it for a few decades now, smartass.
    If they want to lose it to an “Iran OPFOR” style attack I am going to shit myself, piss on the fire, call in the dogs and start fortifying my concrete bunker.

  69. 69.

    Roger Moore

    @burnspbesq:

    More to the point, at least this week: does DPRK have any weapons systems capable of plausibly threatening a carrier battle group?

    I sincerely doubt it. Those CVBGs were designed to have a good chance of surviving the worst the Soviets/Russians could throw at them, which was a hell of a lot more than North Korea can manage. The thing that has the best chance against a carrier is a submarine, but the North Koreans are literally using 50s era subs. As long as the CVBG stays well offshore- and their planes have enough range they can do that and still attack effectively- there isn’t a lot the North Koreans can do about them.

  70. 70.

    Another Scott

    @Mnemosyne: A nuclear bomb has on the order of 25 pounds of uranium or plutonium in it. Fukushima lost hundreds of tonnes of radioactive fuel rods and other stuff (per destroyed reactor), and probably millions of gallons of contaminated water.

    The scale is hugely different.

    HTH.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  71. 71.

    Sab

    @efgoldman: When I was a kid in Florida in the sixties our neighbors had a bomb shelter. Major problem keeping snakes out. The snakes LOVED it. Rattlesnakes, king snakes, indigo snakes, coral snakes. They all loved it.

  72. 72.

    jl

    @Roger Moore: I think the real danger is that NK could kill a lot of people in SK, and the situation would spiral out of control.

    Even if it didn’t spiral out of control, the effects of real fighting or rocket attacks along Korean border would cook the US good as world leader, if Trump was seen as doing some foolish to spark it. Many countries, large and small, would think “We are outta here, US nutbags’ and start laying ground work for new security arrangements and diplomatic ties.

    Not to mentions thousands of US military casualties immediately.

    I do hope Trump’s generals have round the clock advisory teams with beepers 24/7 in case Trump gets a bug up his ass. Like Kim celebrates his birthday by ordering a flunky to send out an insulting tweet.

  73. 73.

    Yarrow

    @Cheryl Rofer: I think the idea that the president could just decide, “Hey! Let’s see what happens if I press this button.” all by himself is a bad, bad idea. Some sort of consensus should have to be involved. Otherwise an unstable leader could just randomly decide to nuke someone.

    Edit: Like a lot of norms that have have been ignored (releasing tax returns, divesting of businesses, etc.) the general assumption is that the president won’t be mentally unstable and just decide to nuke people for whatever reason. We now know we need laws. Meanwhile…

  74. 74.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Another Scott: But most of the radioactive material at Fukushima was contained. An air burst over Tokyo would produce uncontained and scattered fission and activation products, along with whatever fissile material was unused. So more would be scattered.

  76. 76.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Roger Moore: I’m just going to stick this at the top of the front page and pin it there…//
    http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/america-insists-on-a-13-billion-aircraft-carrier-thats-1793233401

    President Donald Trump stood aboard the $13 billion USS Gerald R. Ford on March 2 to boast about his plans to increase military spending. Trump told the audience of sailors that more of them were coming and that they have no peers. One important note he forgot to add is that aircraft carriers, as bold and intimidating as they appear, are very susceptible to attack.

    The problem with how the Pentagon spends money, and its outlook in general, is that it fails to build hardware for wars of today. The need for a massive number of carriers is hangover line of thinking from the World War II days, when the U.S. had considerable access to the world’s major waters and our adversaries could not defend themselves against the Navy’s superior nautical presence.

    American aircraft carriers are extremely expensive, but they are also incredible vulnerable to a wide range of enemy fire. China and Russia, America’s most powerful adversaries, have been building precise and sophisticated anti-ship weapons for decades, such as the P-700 Granit supersonic cruise missile, which is specifically designed to break through American carrier group countermeasures.

    Though in service since the 1980s, the P-700 consists more a system of multiple missiles rather than just one missile, fired one at a time. If P-700s are fired in a group of four to eight, they form a network that decide amongst themselves which missile will prioritize the main target (like a carrier).

    The missile that designates the target flies at a higher altitude, guiding the others skimming the sea surface to their eventual endpoint. A missile flying at a higher altitude is easier to shoot down, however, and the P-700 system was designed with this fact in mind. So if the lead missile, flying high above the others, is knocked out of the sky, another one of the group immediately pops upwards to replace it.

    Knocking out a group of eight missiles that conveniently offer themselves up for sacrifice one at a time sounds easy enough, until you realize that these things are moving at speeds of at least Mach 1.6, or 1,227 miles per hour at sea level. And the P-700s pack a big enough punch to do real damage, as defense reporter and occasional Foxtrot Alpha contributor Kyle Mizokami once pointed out at The National Interest:

    The P-700 was a large missile designed to kill large ships. The P-700 was thirty-three feet long and nearly three feet wide. Each weighed 15,400 pounds each, most of which was fuel for the ramjet-powered engine which propelled the missile at speeds of Mach 1.6 to a range of 388 miles.

    The missile packed either a 1,653-pound conventional high explosive warhead, enough to damage an aircraft carrier, or a five-hundred-kiloton nuclear warhead, enough to vaporize a carrier. The missiles would be fed targeting data from the Legenda space surveillance system, which would hunt fast-moving carrier battle groups from orbit.
    And that’s just one missile system that the Russian Navy has been using for decades. Newer missile systems, like the BrahMos, move at double the speed with even more lethality.

    But let’s assume for a second that the P-700, or even the BrahMos, wouldn’t be able to get past an American carrier battle group’s complex mix of countermeasures, such as RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles, RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles, decoys, and—if all else fails—Phalanx close-in weapons systems.

    What you would really need to get through that tenacious net would be a torpedo, preferably fired by a submarine. But the U.S. Navy has made steady cuts to its anti-submarine capabilities for years now.

    In October of 2015, a Project 636-class submarine managed to stalk the American aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan off the coast of Japan without getting caught “for at least half a day.” And a submarine doesn’t need that long to fire off its lethal package.

    The Project 636 was likely following the Reagan to protest Freedom of Navigation exercises taking place at the time to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. As Foxtrot Alpha has reported, China has been asserting its power in the region by building artificial islands in the body of water that have violated other nation’s maritime borders. In any case, the move was a clear sign Beijing doesn’t fear the Navy’s mighty carrier fleet.

    Much more at the link.

  78. 78.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    The only thing Trump is predictable about is padding his wallet. The Syrian adventure proved eloquently that no matter how much he thumps his chest, his actual actions will serve the interest of his paying client. Whatever China wants, he will do.

  79. 79.

    jl

    @Cheryl Rofer: Does that rule apply even if there is no evidence of an imminent threat? NK ain’t going to be sending thousands of warheads our way, to arrive in 30 minutes. No reason to believe that China or Russia want any part of NK BS over the next week.

    So, nothing on radar, no diplomatic crisis with threats of war, and the prez just yells ‘Emergency! Danger, Will Robinson, danger!’ and the fool president can order a launch? In the face of radio and radar silence? That just doesn’t sound right.

    Doesn’t take a Dr. Strangelove to think of potential problems that would sadly,then be all too obvious.

  80. 80.

    Chet Murthy

    @Cheryl Rofer: Cheryl, being informed is different from hearing what we want to hear, sadly. So thank you for informing us. To me, the thing that stood out of all your comments was the following:

    I think Kim Jung Un is quite mentally and emotionally stable. He is working in the service of his family’s interests, to stay in power and thus keep North Korea safe. …. The convention for doing analyses like this is to assume sanity and emotional stability on the part of heads of government. …. But Trump has been so arbitrary that analysis is almost impossible. …. rational analysis is very difficult.

    Which I could summarize: “Dampnut is a greater wild card than Kim Jong Un, by far”. Wow, I never thought I’d hear that said about an American President*.

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    @Cheryl Rofer: Everything depends, of course. But people are living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it’s hard to imagine anyone living around the Chernobyl or Fukushima Exclusion Zones anytime soon.

    Nuclear weapons cause a massive amount of damage, but the total area affected is relatively small compared to these reactor disasters.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  82. 82.

    Yarrow

    @Cheryl Rofer: Up until now we’ve been able to assume that our leaders were patriots first, that they’d follow norms, they’d put country before party. It’s clear we cannot assume any of those things anymore. We need laws. Ironclad with serious consequences.

  84. 84.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @jl: In theory, yes, the American President can just shoot off the nukes any time. The norm we have followed (although not a formal declaration) is that we would not do a first strike. Thus, the half-hour transit time/ four minute decision time, because it would be the Russians who fired first.

    As I say, there was a time when we could assume certain things about the American President.

  86. 86.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sab: It is the twitter alternative that the alt-right types created when twitter started cracking down.

  87. 87.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Okay, y’all, it’s my bedtime, thanks for the questions. I plan to post tomorrow at Nuclear Diner on the movement to develop a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons, which relates to some of this discussion. I’ll check back tomorrow morning to see if there are any more questions.

  88. 88.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Another Scott: I might add, and Omnes can back me up on this, that training artillery crews is EXPENSIVE in terms of ordnance expended. Can the NKs afford to give their artillery crews the training they need to be as effective as they can be?

  89. 89.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: There has been speculation that Secretary Mattis has, as was the rumored to reported case with Nixon’s SecDef, quietly pushed down the chain that any launch order is to be verified with him before the keys are turned. It is highly unlikely we will ever know if this has actually been done.

  93. 93.

    Corner Stone

    @Sab: Don’t listen to Adam. GAB is actually a timeout response value for commenting call/response systems.

  95. 95.

    Corner Stone

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    I plan to post tomorrow at Nuclear Diner on the movement to develop a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons

    “If Tomorrow Never Comes”
    /Garth Brooks

  96. 96.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Corner Stone:
    https://gab.ai/

    Preamble
    Gab’s mission is to put people and free speech first. We believe that the only valid form of censorship is an individual’s own choice to opt-out. Gab empowers users to filter and remove unwanted followers, words, phrases, and topics they do not want to see in their feeds. However, we do take steps to protect ourselves and our users from illegal activity, spam, and abuse. By signing up for Gab, all users agree to adhere to the policies set forth below. Failure to comply will result in sanctions as explained in our How We Enforce Our Guidelines section.

    Gab’s policy is to follow all applicable laws in The United States of America, the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s rulings on the First Amendment. We use the Court’s rulings, precedents and judgments as our guiding principles for protecting and empowering free speech and expression. You may not use our service for any unlawful purposes or illegal activities.

  97. 97.

    Fake Irishman

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    Don’t know if anyone chimed in on this upthread, but no. NK could do considerable damage to Seoul with conventional weapons and kill lots of people, but we have to remember a few things, namely that the South Koreans won’t just stand there helplessly saying “kill us.”
    1. South Korea is pretty good at Civil Defense. People know where to go and what to do and they practice. — within a half hour, everyone would be underground or evacuating.
    2. NK batteries can’t just fire and fire — the South Koreans and Americans will spin up their own artillery and aircraft pretty quickly to hit artillery positions. NK can conceal their pieces or move them, but that slows down the firing rate a lot.
    3. Finally, remember that there are thousands of Chinese diplomats, businessmen, students and tourists in Seoul at any given time. Dozens would likely die in a NK strike. That would create some serious issues.

    Here’s a study that lays it out. I’m sure others here can elaborate or poke holes in the paper, but I found it really illuminating.

  98. 98.

    sigaba

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    The thing was, if you were there on the ground, you could walk a block away from the demonstrations and the pepper gas and it was life as usual. In fact, both the demonstrators and the police would wait for the TV news crews to get all set up before the action began.

    Thus we measure the progress of civilization.

  99. 99.

    Mike in NC

    Nobody should ever forget that the lunatic Trump seriously asked during the campaign that “what was the point of possessing nuclear weapons if you couldn’t use them?”

  100. 100.

    Ruckus

    @efgoldman:
    Unless tactics and concepts have changed dramatically since I was stationed on a DDG that a good part of the time under way served as surveillance, protection and ditching pilot recovery duty, I’d say it would take a very large number of small boats to do much damage to a US carrier. There are now several weapons that are used for close in attack protection. Mini-guns are one and most of the ships that patrol with carriers have them. They could sink a decent sized boat (not ship) pretty fast. And that’s if they even got close.

  101. 101.

    Corner Stone

    @Adam L Silverman: GAB
    “By default, the VCS_GAB_TIMEOUT is set for 15 seconds (15000 milliseconds).This indicates that if after 15 seconds GAB has not responded, the High Availability Daemon (HAD) will be restarted. This would occur in environments where the systems are heavily taxed by excessively high CPU and system resource usage. In some instances it may be necessary to modify the default timeout value to alleviate the issues. Please be advised that while this will eliminate or allow for longer gaps in response time for GAB, it will NOT correct the underlying resource issue on the client’s system.”

  103. 103.

    jl

    I don’t know if Trump is a lunatic. What scares me is the vague inchoate nonsense that floats through his head in the place of what normal, and even somewhat slow witted, people call ‘thinking’. Look at is absurd threat today to wreck Obamacare to get Democrats to the table:

    Trump Threatens to Torch More Republicans

    ” The President is not only flailing. He is unable to grasp the political reality he faces – indeed, the one he in many ways created – and is thus making nonsensical threats. He is essence putting a gun to House Republicans heads and telling Democrats, don’t make me do it. His threats are risible and thus counterproductive. Things will grow more chaotic and disordered than they already are. ”

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-threatens-to-torch-more-republicans

    I disagree with one thing Marshall says earlier in the piece, that Trump is handling two international crises right now. There is no international crisis, particularly none that directly threatens US security. Any semblance of an international crisis is due to the Trump administration’s half-baked actions and senseless incoherent statements. Any serious international crisis is due to the Trump himself and his administration. And fears of what those goofs might do next.

  108. 108.

    Roger Moore

    @Another Scott:
    Another way to think about this is that we used to do atmospheric nuclear tests. There have been over 500 uncontained nuclear tests, including some real monsters like the 50 MT Tsar Bomba. The best estimate is that the radiation from them has contributed to about 11,000 deaths, or in the neighborhood of 20 people per test. Those tests were deliberately done in sparsely populated areas to minimize unintended side effects, so they seem like a reasonable baseline for estimating the potential hazards to people a long way away from a nuclear attack.

  113. 113.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Lizzy L: From the actual article:
    http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/12/national/u-s-told-japan-trump-xi-talks-option-strike-n-korea/?utm_source=Daily%20News%20Updates#.WO642WWfpuU

    The position is also at odds with a report in the Wall Street Journal citing a senior U.S. official as saying that Trump had signed off on a policy approach on the North “that involves increased economic and political pressure, while military options remain under consideration longer term.”

    Military options, the Journal cited the official as saying, were “on the back burner.”

    However, according to the sources, the State Department official’s remarks prompted the Japanese government to believe that a military strike was fast becoming a realistic option for Washington.

    Trump held telephone talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last Thursday and was quoted as telling him the U.S. considered all options were on the table in dealing with the North.

    Trump then met Xi at his Florida resort for two days through last Friday, during which the U.S. president asserted that if Beijing did not step up pressure on Pyongyang, Washington was ready to take unilateral action.

  116. 116.

    Roger Moore

    @Fake Irishman:

    1. South Korea is pretty good at Civil Defense. People know where to go and what to do and they practice. — within a half hour, everyone would be underground or evacuating.

    And, of course, crises rarely happen out of the blue, which is exactly why we’re talking about this now. If an attack comes, it will probably be preceded by ratcheting up in tensions. If things get close to war, civilians may evacuate the most vulnerable areas in anticipation of an attack. So North Korea might wind up doing a lot of property damage but not necessarily kill a lot of civilians.

  118. 118.

    jl

    @Roger Moore: Naw, man, it would be murderous damn catastrophe for the Korean Peninsula, and our military. Some of you people are whistling past the graveyard.

  119. 119.

    Mnemosyne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Nah, I’m good. I only moved to the SFV in 2004.

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Which reminds me, the next Sanders die-hard I run into who told me during the election that Hillary is a warmonger and Trump would never get us into stupid wars overseas gets kicked in the balls. Twice. With pointy shoes.

  122. 122.

    hovercraft

    @jl:
    A response to a question you posed downstairs.

    Did Obama ever throw a BBQ, or damn pic-a-nic with baskets and paper plates? If so, I take back my comment.

    This was FOX’s response to his 50th birthday bash:
    Obama’s Hip-Hop BBQ Didn’t Create Jobs
    Published August 5, 2011
    Obama’s party–paid for, the White House said, by the First Couple–was closed press and not on his official schedule. Obama’s team was not eager for pictures of the bash, coming as the stock market was plunging and a new jobless report comes out Friday morning.

    Compare that to this satirical article and tell me if you could tell the difference if I hadn’t said which was which.

    Obama Promises To Have “BBQ Cookout” On White House Lawn Before End Of Presidency
    “I’m gonna say it because I’ve been wanting to say it,” said Obama. “Everybody wants to talk about the first black president. Black this, black that. Sure I played some basketball at the White House, even listen to rap music when nobody was looking. But now I’m going to show America how black I can get. We are barbecuing and throwing a cookout on the White House lawn. Obama Out!”

  123. 123.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    missile

    Showy.

    If you’re actually trying to hit a port city with a nuke, rather than make a theatrical gesture,
    a standard cargo container is your delivery vehicle of choice.

  124. 124.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Well this is just lovely:

    Well, that’s some goddamned secret, isn’t it?
    Leaking about civil war among Shitgibbon’s close advisors is one thing. This? This is a whole other level of incompetence. (The leak AND the warning).

  125. 125.

    jl

    @hovercraft: Thanks. But gosh golly gee. Now I am confused. Didn’t the famous McCain tire swing get its debut at a BBQ that he threw? Everyone thought that was just swell. I wonder what explains the difference?

    Sincerely,
    Puzzled in California

    Edit: but thanks, I now formally retract my comment below about the Obama WH being sometimes overly precious and twee in its diplomatic functions and celebratory events. A good God damned all-American BBQ. Good. Hope they had paper plates. Too bad toxic racism widespread in the US ruined the fun.

  126. 126.

    joel hanes

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    the training they need to be as effective

    Massed artillery firing from long-established, hardened sites against many-times-surveyed-and-plotted targets does not require the training needed for the normal Field Artillery role: a mobile, flexibly-deployed unit firing for the first time from a new site that will be abandoned as soon as the rounds are off, from survey data that’s literally minutes old, supporting forward observers on the edge of harm’s way.

    Communicate. Move. Communicate. Shoot. Fire for effect.
    Lather rinse repeat
    That takes training.

  128. 128.

    Mnemosyne

    @hovercraft:

    As I said this morning, one of the funniest things I read today was a right-wing woman blogger tentatively getting pissed at Trump for going to Mar-A-Lago every weekend and playing too much golf when those were the exact things she used to bash Obama for doing. Some of her commenters defended Trump, but I was a little surprised that a good half of them were also a little pissy and wanted Trump to stop embarrassing them.

    It’s so ironic to me that, in electing Trump, they elected the guy who is everything they falsely claimed Obama was, and now we’re all stuck with the results of their crappy judgement.

  129. 129.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I don’t even want to think about what a Trump BBQ would look like. Cheeseburgers with BBQ sauce, and mayo, I guess. No tire swing, no horseshoes, no WH lawn and paper plates. Worst president ever in every way.

  131. 131.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne:

    I only moved to the SFV in 2004.

    I know you studied artsy fartsy stuff in college, but you do understand the concept of half life of radioactive isotopes? They also used to set off lots of bombs over in Nevada; fun fact, you could see the sky light up in LA from the blasts that occurred at night.

  133. 133.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I understand you can still drink rocket fuel in parts of Simi Valley. I was told it was an ancient Native American custom there and nothing to worry about. some right wing aerospace engineer who lives down there told me that.

  134. 134.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    ” They also used to set off lots of bombs over in Nevada; fun fact, you could see the sky light up in LA from the blasts that occurred at night. ”

    Some of your pics of the area have a funny lighting effect. You still glowing a little, or what?

  136. 136.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @jl:

    I was told it was an ancient Native American custom there and nothing to worry about.

    This is the truth, I grew up in the area(1000 Oaks); fun fact, we used to feel(not just hear, FEEL) them test the Saturn V rocket engines.

  139. 139.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Thousand Oaks, huh? Calabasas, Simi Valley? Nice places to visit. I visit a few ex-students who live down there now, and fight against the local political vibe. I think the SE part of SV is where the water is still contaminated with rocket fuel. I guess you know that, Comes in handy when you want a drink that will pep you right up with that special pizzazz.

  143. 143.

    jl

    Far and few, far and few,
    Is the land where the Cal-ies live;
    Our heads are green, and our hands are blue,
    And Bill has a gentle glow,
    Our leader is tall thin Brown

    … and we have hives of silvery bees….

  144. 144.

    efgoldman

    @jl:

    Cheeseburgers with BBQ sauce

    Burnt cheeseburgers slathered in ketchup.
    Or Micky D’s cheeseburgers, which he got at a volume discount, then stiffed the franchise for, anyway.

  145. 145.

    jl

    @efgoldman: Would have a tacky gold menu with an embossed pic of a Trump BBQ Cheeseburger on it too. Probably with phone number and url for volume order from local Trump resort outlet.

    Class all the way, eh?

  148. 148.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Things went to hell on Dub’s watch, but god-damn was he resolute and did he stand strong! So much winning under the gifts that our recent GOP presidents shower down upon us.

    And we are still winning from 8 years of the Dub approach. Double plus winning.

  150. 150.

    Chet Murthy

    @liberal: holey moley. Postol is no dope, afaict.

    I stand ready to provide the country with any analysis and help that is within my power to supply. What I can say for sure herein is that what the country is now being told by the White House cannot be true and the fact that this information has been provided in this format raises the most serious questions about the handling of our national security.

    I believe the apposite word is “Incoming!”

  151. 151.

    Steeplejack

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    I ran the Creators Update this morning (Wednesday), and it went off without a hitch. Took a while, of course. Solved the ongoing problem I had been having with Windows repeatedly failing to complete the Anniversary Update. I’ve had to nuke a few instances of “Would you like some help with [something I don’t want help with]?” and “Here are some neato features [that are not neato or even vaguely desirable],” etc.

    Only thing bugging me now is Cortana, which seems impossible to uproot. I’m not using voice input, but on my log-in screen I get messages to “Tap and say [some pointless question].” Ugh.

    Anyway, thanks for the update link.

  152. 152.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Steeplejack: Yeah, that Cortana thing is on the lock screen; just ignore it like I’ve done for a while. I’ve turned on voice input for it and it’s pretty good, though I’ve had it respond to the news a couple of times.

  153. 153.

    SgrAstar

    @liberal: Whoa! Ted Postol is very credible, imho. What the heck is happening to us? Earth to Adam: can you weigh in in this?

  156. 156.

    NotMax

    @Cheryl Rofer

    Not a nuclear scientist (nor do I play one on TV), but based on the yields measured has the possibility that DPRK is going on the cheap (as it were) by utilizing uranium hydride as fissile material been seriously studied?

    Long time since looked at the info, too, but vaguely recall the hydride-based bomb was theorized at Los Alamos in the early years of the nuclear age to give greater yield for the buck (as it were) but when actually tested turned out exactly the opposite, being popguns compared to conventional designs..

    @Mnemosyne

    Bikini atoll is closer to L.A. than is Tokyo and was for all intents and purposes environmentally unaffected by the multitude of pre-Test Ban Treaty explosions there (including devices orders of magnitude more powerful than anything DPRK is surmised to be able to construct, much less deploy). The Pacific Ocean is big. Really big.

  157. 157.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: That is what I’ve said to people who wondered why Mattis would take the SecDef job. But I said it under the assumption that SecDef was part of the chain of nuclear command. Now that Wellerstein has figured out that he isn’t, I have to modify the belief to a weaker idea that Mattis still thinks he can deflect that command somehow. And, as someone else pointed out upthread, dissenters can be replaced. Although that didn’t work so well for Nixon in the Saturday night massacre, and most people don’t want a nuclear war, so maybe Mattis could prevent one that way.

  158. 158.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: At this point, it’s hard to know what the Trump administration means when it says something. My hopeful scenario is that the carrier group and the suggestion of possible military action are what Trump thinks of as “looking strong.” The cruise missile strike on an almost-deserted Syrian airport seems to have been the least of the military actions presented to him, so his choosing that was a good sign, although his having to present that to the world in the middle of an ad for his resort’s chocolate cake is unnerving.

  159. 159.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @liberal: I plan to start looking at the Postol piece today. Don’t know if I’ll post on it. I have been crabby on Twitter about the Assad-deniers who think that a mysterious bunch of a few hundred rebels took time off from fighting to build a sarin factory, which is totally invisible to all methods of detection, rather than that Assad held back some of his stock when he was disarmed in 2014. Every expert on WMD figured he would, including me. We even said it at the time.

    Part of the reason I’m crabby is that a bunch of us debunked that idea thoroughly back in 2014. Postol wrote a piece back then, too, and he got a lot of things wrong, plus he got himself mixed up with a very pro-Assad blogger, who presents as a lovely young lady and flattered him. His chemistry in that piece was just flat wrong in places, and the missileers say the same about his range calculations. Another part is that talking about that sort of thing on Twitter brings a group of trolls. I blocked them the first time around, but I’m sure there will be a new crop.

    Twitter accounts to follow are @DanKaszeta and @Bellingcat. Dan has done a few tweetstreams laying it all out. He and Bellingcat will have deconstructions of Postol’s article.

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