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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / North Korea Claims To Have A Hydrogen Bomb

North Korea Claims To Have A Hydrogen Bomb

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And not just any hydrogen bomb, but one that can fit in a warhead, with variable yields.

A bunch of us are discussing this on Twitter. A few observations:

  • What they are showing is a case. We don’t know what is in it.
  • They have done five tests. None is high enough yield to be likely to be what is called a two-stage device.
  • What is possible is that they are using tritium gas injected into the pit to boost the yield.

Follow @mhanham, @atomic_pickles, @narangvipin, and @DaveSchmerler. There are others, like @ArmsControlWonk, who don’t seem to be around now.

Some good threads:

I’ll stick around in the comments and post hot takes.

Reader Interactions

122Comments

  1. 1.

    efgoldman

    Somebody, or multiple somebodies, is making shit up.

    ETA: Do you suppose that young Kim, or someone in his inner circle, is actually trying to provoke a pre-emptive attack? Crazy, to me, but what do i know?

  2. 2.

    Cermet

    LOL; their so-called atomic bomb is a extremely low yield weapon that, while still enough to do terrible damage to a city, is just too small to trigger a hydrogen bomb. Their last test was under 3 kilo-tons and that is far below our first test bomb (27 kiloton or there about..) The only new news is that they are trying to get attention for, well, news.

  4. 4.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @efgoldman: If they are, what a great time to do it! Trump is fulminating about his misconceptions of what a trade balance is and threatening to start a war with South Korea. Kim Jong Un has outthought Trump at every turn.

  6. 6.

    Mike J

    Armscontrolwonk posted a pic of himself enjoying a margarita, so of course nork nuke news came out. Every time the man relaxes the tiniest bit they launch a missile or wheel out a nuke.

  7. 7.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Cermet: The estimate for the latest test (last September) is 15-25 kiloton yield. Some experts think it could have been larger. We know little about the geology of their test site or how they emplace their devices, so there are large error bars. All but the first test were larger than 3 kT.

  8. 8.

    efgoldman

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Kim Jong Un has outthought Trump at every turn.

    With all due respect, that takes no more smarts than outhinking my granddaughter, who just turned four.
    Actually, she asks better questions and learns faster.

  10. 10.

    ??‍? Martin

    @Cheryl Rofer: Yep. KJU is not crazy. They’ve successfully kept everyone from crossing their border, their primary goal for 50 years. It’s obvious to all that Trump is a chickenshit – only tough on the most vulnerable.

  11. 11.

    Schlemazel

    People whose opinion I trust tell me that the norks don’t have a warhead that can withstand reentry. They also don’t have reliable guidance and couldn’t do better than a scud. They are still years away but we should stop the bullshit before they have all the tools and figure out how to live with them

  12. 12.

    RobertDSC-iPhone 6

    As a west coast denizen and in range of theoretical weapons from the North Koreans, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of the assessments made by our Establishment or announcements made by the NoKos.

    Do I think they have nukes? Yes.

    Missiles and MIRVs? No.

  13. 13.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Baud: They like to drop stuff on our holidays.

    Also, they have been trying to have a conversation with the US. After Trump’s “fire and fury”, they issued a statement whose first half, maybe two-thirds, was about the B-1 overflights of South Korea from Guam. They don’t like those overflights. The rest of the statement was their threat to send missiles around Guam. Cable news covered only that last part. Statements since then have been consistent with the idea that they are trying to establish some sort of interaction.

    The frequency of B-1 flights went down for a while. Mattis said that that had nothing to do with the North Korean statement, until this week, when he said it did. If that was intended to signal back to North Korea, they should have said something to North Korea, perhaps in secret. The current state seems to be a muddle.

    Trump’s tweets and statements, of course, are totally ignorant of this possible opening. And besides, he just wants North Korea to back down in the face of his manhood and Vice President Pence’s resolve face across the DMZ.

  15. 15.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Schlemazel: Who are those people? I like to know who’s saying what on this.

    My own sense is that they have done much less testing than is needed to back up their claims. Some of their missile tests have incorporated telemetry, but we don’t know what they were monitoring.

    But there are ways to test their assemblies without shooting them on missiles. Shake tables and other testing equipment are readily available.

    On guidance, again we don’t know.

    The spy agencies probably have a somewhat better knowledge than is publicly available, but they’re not talking.

  17. 17.

    jl

    @Jumbo76: I was going to criticize your comment, then realized you have a good point. Any technical signs what they have in the pics is a BS mock up? (edit: that question was for Cheryl R)

    What NK has done since Dub ditched the Bill Clinton arrangement, flawed as it was, the situation has gone rapidly downhill. We need some creative thinking to manage this. I guess we’ll have to hope we can luck out while Trumpsters are in charge, or that his central casting generals have some good ideas and can be last people in the room on this issue for next 3.5 years.

    The GOP brag bluster and ignore policy had been a dismal failure and we need something better.

  19. 19.

    Schlemazel

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    I really can’t say because they don’t want the attention and their comments have not been as straight forward as I portray. They used to be involved and now only know people who are. They are not fans of the hype and panic but then a lot of Intel is reading entrails so ymmv

  21. 21.

    chopper

    if they really had a thermonuclear bomb, they’d test it. they wouldn’t put it in an operational package first.

  23. 23.

    Shantanu Saha

    @Cheryl Rofer

    Kim Jong Un has outthought Trump at every turn.

    My six-year-old son has outhought Trump at every turn. He certainly asks more thoughtful questions about world events, and does more rational analysis of policy than Trump does.

  24. 24.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @jl: I have pointed out, again and again, that the “disco ball,” and now this one, show cases only. Because pictures and models showing the arrangement of hydrogen bombs are readily available, it would be easy enough to mock up a case with nothing in it.

    But the progression of North Korea’s tests suggests that they are learning rapidly. What they may be doing with this is previewing a nuclear test on September 9, which is one of their national days, and a year after the last test.

  25. 25.

    jl

    @Cheryl Rofer: Thanks. But if there are a lot of pix of the real things in public domain, it would be pretty easy to make a mock up what would have ‘worrying’ external signs.

    What is in the history of their tests that would indicate there is something workable inside?

    @Cheryl Rofer: thanks for your response, I posted this comment before I saw yours.

  28. 28.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @chopper:

    if they really had a thermonuclear bomb, they’d test it. they wouldn’t put it in an operational package first.

    I think they still have to test a two-stage device. It’s a pretty good guess that they have already tested boosting.

    Your point is a good one, and something I’ve used to argue that the North Korean nuclear arsenal is smaller than many portray it, perhaps 10-20 max rather than the 50-60 numbers that have recently come out. But I think that it’s likely that North Korea is willing to go forward with less testing than the United States or other nuclear countries have done.

  29. 29.

    jl

    @rikyrah: Sadly, I think it is the news we should have been expecting all along, ever since the glorious GOP BS and bluster policy was introduced by previous worst president ever, Dub. Only the timing has been in doubt.

  30. 30.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Things have slowed down on Twitter as reporters call the folks who do the measurements and otherwise try to figure things out. I think I’m going to leave the internet for a bit and come back in an hour or two.

  31. 31.

    jl

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    ” But I think that it’s likely that North Korea is willing to go forward with less testing than the United States or other nuclear countries have done. ”

    I think that makes since if the program is as much a regime insurance policy as a practical military policy.

    I’ve heard conflicting reports on their recent shorter range missile tests. First hearing and reading initial reports that half of them were failures, and then reporting that didn’t mention that. So I am puzzled about what their recent tests indicate about reliability.

  32. 32.

    Mary G

    Since it seems that the NK is trying to get us to talk to them in their ham-handed way, it would be nice to have a functioning State Dept. and Secretary who isn’t focused on savings instead of diplomacy, just saying.

  34. 34.

    chopper

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    I’m sure that their earlier tests are for boosted devices. it explains why the yields haven’t gone up. likewise any country these days with a nuke program is going to move as fast as they can to a thermonuclear device for a number of reasons, one of which is it’s an efficient use of plutonium which as producing materials go is a weak link. why spend time increasing yields of fission devices when you can instead shrink them and raise efficiency to use in a two stage device.

    I have no doubts they’ll test a hydrogen bomb soon enough. this pic is clearly a mockup of what they’re shooting for.

    ETA: at least one test. I don’t think they’ve tested many boosted devices, maybe only one. but I think they have figured that bit out.

  37. 37.

    Arclite

    We can’t develop directed energy countermeasures soon enough. It’s the 21st century, where are our lasers?

  39. 39.

    jl

    @Arclite:

    ” Also, pretty hypocritical of us since we dev’d these weapons too. ”

    And also because Trump himself, during the campaign, advertised the wise policy (snark alert) of handing out nukes and letting various regions sort things out.
    Talk about stupid BS that can cause real damage, that is an example, which kicked into high gear when Trump got himself elected.

  40. 40.

    efgoldman

    @Arclite:

    A preemptive attack, why?

    Not suggesting it will or should happen, just that young Kim might think that’s how Henna Hariball’s “mind” works.

  42. 42.

    Felonius Monk

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Kim Jong Un has outthought Trump at every turn.

    Crisp Almighty, who hasn’t? Even Pence has outthought Trump at every turn and Pence is certifiably stupid.

  51. 51.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @efgoldman:

    ETA: Do you suppose that young Kim, or someone in his inner circle, is actually trying to provoke a pre-emptive attack?

    It is precisely regime change in any form that Kim wants to prevent with his nuclear weapons. North Korea was part of the “Axis of Evil,” and he saw what happened to Iraq.

    I think that this move, whether those cases contain anything or not, is one more in his trying to provoke negotiations. “If you want us not to test on September 9, talk to us.”

    I could be totally wrong, of course, but I think there is a persistent theme in North Korea’s recent statements and behavior.

  52. 52.

    efgoldman

    ABC is headlining this as “The Greatest Opener of All Time.”
    Even allowing for hyperbole by a headline-writing intern, it isn’t that. But it’s a damned entertaining game, with two excellent teams.
    Of course, I’m in “can both teams lose” territory. Also, that last pass play was definitely interference that the zebras missed/ignored.

  54. 54.

    Jumbo76

    @jl:

    It would have been ok to criticize. That was part of my point–is there anything we can see that shows this is BS. But also, I just don’t know what one of these should look like. You could take my Weber grill, give it a paint job, and call it thermonuclear device, and how the hell should I know? This just isn’t something I know anything about.

  56. 56.

    Jacel

    @Baud:

    Why would they drop this news on Labor Day weekend? Makes no sense.

    Yeah. Don’t they realize that everybody here will be distracted on Labor Day weekend watching the Jerry Lewis Tele…

    Oh… Well played, North Korea. Well played.

  58. 58.

    Jacel

    @Cheryl Rofer: Trump strong-arming now South Korea made no sense, until I realized he might have watched too many bad movies where the kingpin kills one of his henchmen just to demonstrate to the captured hero how powerful he is.

  59. 59.

    efgoldman

    @opiejeanne:

    What are you on about?

    Kawletch f’bawl.

    @raven:

    As pretty an evening for UGA football that I have seen in 32 years here.

    I see that Georgia has managed to hold off mighty Appalachian State.

  63. 63.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I did this as a midday story early in the week. Given circumstances, it’s a good time to run it again.

    
RAGNAROK’S BEST, MOST FABULOUS, VERY FABULOUS STORY

    He slumped in the overstuffed chair, the confusion and fatigue of the last two days filling his mind with intermittent static and causing him to occasionally nod off. As The Great Man cleared the gunk from his eyes and peered around the windowless concrete walls and at the intense men and women straining their tear-reddened gaze at monitors while dejectedly whispering, he decided he was a little bored and reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. After he happily noted that there were at least 4 bars of wifi in this place, he stroked the little blue button with the white bird on it, and waited…

    …and waited…

    Finally, a message appeared on the screen that the server could not be found, and The Great Man had a flash of memory. “Oh, that”, he thought, as a nameless orderly pushed a cold glass of Coca Cola and ice at his tiny hand with barely disguised contempt, splashing him in the process. The Secret Service agent standing with his weapon out at his side (there had already been at least three plots that had been exposed and interrupted) stopped crying long enough to frown at the orderly briefly and shake his head from side to side in the mildest rebuke.
    
Beyond that interaction, no one in the room seemed to care to look at him. They performed their tasks almost as automatons, albeit dejected and suicidal automatons. If The Great Man had been capable of empathy, he would have recognized the signs that several of them would be consigning themselves to eternity alone in their rooms after their designated watches were complete; they wouldn’t have much to do in the bunker after those watches were done, anyhow. That nagging sensation which always seemed to be lurking around the corner was really eating at him now – the personal isolation – that horrible disconnect with the world around was a wolf which couldn’t be held at bay, and that always made him cranky. “Hmph”, he said to himself as he grabbed the TV remote out of the cupholder of the chair as he swapped out the phone. “Losers. That internet was supposed to keep working all the time, it was supposed to be built for stuff like this”. He stabbed the “on” button on the remote, but saw nothing but static. No Doocey, no Hannity, not even that hateful dyke Maddow or that jerk Scarborough, even though they were all on, babbling just a couple of days ago.

    “John”, he shouted. “What the hell is going on out there now?”

    His chief of staff was disheveled, red-eyed, tieless, shirtsleeves rolled up, and shook his head at an air force general before slowly making his way over. “Jesus, sir”, the chief said in sotto voce. “You need to get out of that suit and tie – you’ve been wearing it for 2 days now. And you might try bathing – this facility has good water processing, you need a shave and you smell pretty ripe. I know your hair is an issue for you – cover it with a MAGA hat, it isn’t like we don’t have crates of them”. “Fine, John, but I still want a report”, the man said. “Get up and walk this way, and I’ll let Air Force brief you”.

    As The Great Man ambled over to the table surrounded by generals and admirals, the blue suit looked at the others and rolled his eyes.
    
“Sir”, Air Force said. “Preliminary analysis on the damage in Tehran, Bandar Abbas, Isfahan, Shiraz, Pyongyang, Nampo, Sariwan and Wonsan hadn’t even begun in the aftermath of your attack when the conflict blew up – just as General Mattis predicted before you fired him and went through this without a coherent plan. Those alone probably resulted in at least two million deaths and an equal number wounded.” The Great Man fiddled with the end of his red tie, stained as it was when the giant plane was buffered by shock waves by blasts as it escaped the airspace over New Jersey – his meal of KFC chicken and mashed potatoes wound over his front. Inwardly, he hoped that some franchises would survive – he’d miss those potatoes and gravy. He scrinched on his best rally face and emphasized (these people seemed to need a kick in the ass, nobody looked happy) his gestures. “The time for a bunch of weak was over. I wanted finality”.
    
Air Force sighed. “Finality. Right. You got that, sir. Casualties in Seoul are probably about even with what our models showed – maybe three million. There is no coherent American unit remaining in Korea larger than an augmentmented company, and comms are so spotty that all we can do is to tell them to bug out. The generalized war on the Korean peninsula between the Koreans will probably kill ten million. The initial North Korean launches on Japan were expected, and we were surprised that the Kyoto bomb worked while the other four were fizzles. After the Chinese reaction with regard to American and Japanese military facilities there, the surviving rump of the Japanese government has demanded the expulsion of all American military and government personnel, and have interned survivors as they’ve been found.

    The Great Man had been gazing around absentmindedly while this smart bastard in blue ran his mouth, when spotted a new red hat that somebody had put on the table for him – he could see that it had been defaced by a sharpie marker with the word “asshole” appearing below MAGA. No excuse for that kind of disrespect, he fumed. “None of you told me the Chinese, the Chinese would act like that…”, The Great Man started to say, and Air Force anticipated. “Clearly, they decided we weren’t going to exercise that much power in their sphere of influence ever again. You were warned about that multiple times, but you kept tweeting. In that initial phase, they made sure that the 7th is out of commission, along with Pearl, Long Beach, Yokohama, San Diego, Guam, Sydney. And once those popped, Russia….looking at the timing…went nuts when the Chinese launched. Israel has now popped about a dozen Arab cities, but is going to fall, not that there is much left to get, now that Pakistan jumped in the game against them.”

    The Great Man nodded with this, but started a bit as he heard a technician sob “mom” as she reviewed a tracking radar. Must be some other city gone. He thought he felt a floor vibration – must’ve been close. These people need to toughen up, even the women. Nice ass on that one – he made a mental note to chat her up later.
    
“My family, what about them, John. Did any get out?”, he asked the chief.
    Sir, we didn’t tell you yesterday in all the confusion in making it to the facility and the moment to moment decisions, but the First Lady…she…she and Barron got caught in the Andrews blast. We tried to get the other two in Kalorama, but once it was apparent that the conflict was destined to widen – as Mr. Mattis warned you before you fired him – a mob dragged them out of their home, and we did not arrive on time to stop…what happened to them. About all we managed to do was pick you up at your club in New Jersey. The pickup in New York was an impossibility. The Speaker and the Pro Tem were stalled in Washington traffic and didn’t make it, and Vice President Pence may have been caught in the Texas bombs. We can’t locate him. As far as the federal government is concerned, you are it. There are probably a few governors around still, but we have no decent contact with the various national guard units at the moment. Hell, it was harder to get to this facility than we thought it would be – as you should remember, we ambled around for a day and a half until we could be reasonably sure that nobody else would know this location. We think that deliberate offensive actions on all other have stopped; now we assess, regroup, and figure out what to do.”

    “Well, are we winning? What is our plan to take it to the enemy and win?”, The Great Man said, giving his best executive glare at the men around the table. Each looked at the other one after the other, and ignoring him, looked away and went back to their table to work, ignoring his rising protestations and leaving him to shout into the air.

  74. 74.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Kim Jong Un has outthought Trump at every turn.

    Outthinking Donal Trump?

    That’s a pretty low bar… my friend’s 3 chickens could out think T-Rump at every turn…

  75. 75.

    m.j.

    This shit is getting too deep.
    Suppose some nation who hates the United States (and there seem to be more by the minute) wants to attack and devastate, all they need do is to put a nuke on a container ship or perhaps a fishing vessel or whatever and make harbor in a highly populated area. Kaboom.
    Who do you think is going to be immediately blamed for the attack?
    What will be the response?

  76. 76.

    mai naem mobile

    I really miss Barrack Obama. Cone back. Please come back. Okay, I am breaking out the Ben & Jerrys Cherry Garcia gallon out tonight. Along with the New Years champagne bottle I never opened. I also have a pacifier near my bed if I get really anxious.

  77. 77.

    efgoldman

    @Steve in the ATL: @raven: I’ll just sit here and wait for the inevitable Georgia loss to a team they should beat 99 out of 100 times, and the subsequent calls to fire the coach. Speaking of water is wet.

  78. 78.

    Steve in the ATL

    @m.j.:

    Suppose some nation who hates the United States (and there seem to be more by the minute) wants to attack and devastate, all they need do is to put a nuke on a container ship

    or make a bunch of bullshit facebook posts and get a short-fingered moron installed as president to destroy the US from the inside

  82. 82.

    Bill Arnold

    @m.j.:

    Suppose some nation who hates the United States (and there seem to be more by the minute) wants to attack and devastate, all they need do is to put a nuke on a container ship or perhaps a fishing vessel or whatever and make harbor in a highly populated area.

    This has been a go-to nightmare scenario for at least 20 years, probably longer.
    The problem with this sort of action is anticipating the consequences, which could include at least one all-out thermonuclear exchange and a resulting collapse of human civilization. (particularly if US/Russia|China). Pretty sure, though not entirely sure, that no entity (OK human entity, just to be complete :-) with nuclear weapons wants human civilization to collapse.

  83. 83.

    NCSteve

    @chopper: Right? And you don’t jump straight to a 1961 vintage warhead without ever once having tested anything with a thermonuclear yield. Even knowing that a low-end laptop has more power than the last generation Cray supercomputers that were around when the W88 was designed and that there’s a lot of loose info lying around now while we were basically inventing them from scratch, it just isn’t believable.

    But the thing is, what the North Koreans do have a long history of doing is boasting of already having capabilities that are in development, letting people in the west roll their eyes and make raspberry noises rather than laying on another round of sanctions and then, three to five years later, when they finally have it, often, everyone just shrugs their shoulders rather than lay on another round of sanctions because it doesn’t come as a shock.

    Didn’t work that way for the ICBM tests, of course, but often it has.

  84. 84.

    NCSteve

    @chopper: Except that’s not true. Both India and Pakistan have found their 30kt range fission bomb stockpiles more than sufficient for going on two decades now and there’s no indication that Israel has moved beyond fission warheads, though I’d be shocked if they weren’t all boosted by now.

  85. 85.

    mike in dc

    Well, the long term worst case scenario is NK with 100+ nukes, including thermonuclear, loaded onto SLBMs and mobile ICBMs.

  90. 90.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Now seeing an estimate of 6.3 magnitude. That might be big enough for a two-stage device. Back in the morning.

    Like I said, KJU is a pretty smart publicist. Show the thing, then test it.

  94. 94.

    Cheryl Rofer

    We have several magnitude estimates. I’ve seen 5.1, 5.6, and 6.3. They are logarithmic, so those are big differences. There is a worldwide network of seismic stations that will be figuring this out overnight. Planes will be flying in the hope of picking up some of the isotopes from the test, but North Korea has been very good at containing them. So yeah, now I’m really going to bed.

  96. 96.

    Jacel

    @Bill Arnold: I recall San Francisco Chronicle columnist Art Hoppe responding to Reagan’s Star Wars plans with a column that included multiple scenarios for surface delivery of nuclear weapons, including by dogsled.

  102. 102.

    Edward Marshall

    03-SEP-2017 03:30:06 LAT=41.3 LON=129.1 D=32 mb=5.8 ML=5.3 ndef=38 nsta=37 dist=6 (di6/10 t1.3/1.8 de33/0)

    from CTBT analysis

  104. 104.

    Cheryl Rofer

    The CTBT Organization is having a press conference. I came into it in the middle, sounds like the seismic read is toward the higher end of the range. “Much bigger than the last.” The seismologists will be refining it for another week, but the higher range is concerning.

    Here’s a catch-up thread. @nktpnd is another good follow.

  105. 105.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Our President is tweeting (I don’t link to his tweets as a matter of principle)

    North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States….. (5:30 am)
    ..North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success. (5:39 am)
    South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing! (5:46 am)

    So he is trying to make China and South Korea do all the heavy lifting, which is consistent with his previous stands. He just doesn’t get it. This is not a New York real estate negotiation.

    And let’s not tell him that Kim Jong Un is laughing at him.

  107. 107.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Another short thread. Jon Wolfsthal was in the National Security Council during the Obama administration.

  109. 109.

    Arclite

    @Cheryl Rofer: Well, certainly the only reason they’ve been able to accomplish this is due to China’s economic support. Without it, they’d never have been able to afford the technology and the upgrades they’ve performed on it. The Russians or Pakistanis can give away free nuclear technology to Burundi or Mozambique, but they’ll never develop nukes because they’re too poor. So China has done the heavy lifting in allowing this, and are the key partner in the six party talks. Without Chinese support and cooperation, no diplomacy would be effective. However, you could have effective diplomacy without the USA, for example.

  110. 110.

    Bill Arnold

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    Any further quality links would be a appreciated (over the next week), particularly to long-form writeups, particularly with improved seismic analysis/yield probability distributions.
    (And thanks for what you’ve provided so far.)
    If it’s thermonuclear, it might have the perverse side effect of encouraging Israel (and Pakistan/India) to move beyond boosting in their weapons arsenals.
    If not, then not.

  112. 112.

    Kabiddle

    Trump and the global community should address N Korea as a serious player rather than isolate and sanction the country as some kind of immature nation. As long as we do we only feed their determination to ramp up the threat. They need to be brought into the fold and quickly. This sending the toddler-to-the-corner strategy ain’t going to work. Kim wants recognition of a positive kind. Try to imagine him as a person who grew up in that regime. As long as we double down on punishment, he will too. He’s isolated — Trump should talk. This has been a failed strategy for decades and only serves a very narrow interest. So what if he’s a fascist fuck? History tells they only want positive attention. Look it up.

  113. 113.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Arclite: I will disagree slightly. The United States is essential to diplomacy. North Korea sees the United States as the most likely to try regime change and still at war with North Korea. An armistice was signed to end fighting in 1953, but there has never been a peace treaty.

  114. 114.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Bill Arnold: It’s going to be at least a week. In the meanwhile, I’ve been tweeting. Here’s a thread. I don’t know if I’ll write it up – got lots to do today otherwise. This was going to be a quiet writing weekend.

  115. 115.

    Another Scott

    A good article at 38 North (from 9/1) Getting Tough on North Korea: Iran and Other Mirages – BY: JOSEPH DETHOMAS.

    There are only so many lessons we can learn from other attempts at sanctions – they don’t have a good history of working (and are even less likely to work in the DPRK).

    Of course, military actions don’t have a good history of working all that well, either…

    Rex and Donnie need to talk to experts and start thinking about this rationally. I’m not holding my breath though…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  116. 116.

    Vhh

    @Arclite: i am a physicist. The problem is that even laser beams scatter their energy in the atmosphere. An airborne laser requires a planeload of highly volatile chemicals–a massive flying bomb–to power a laser remotely powerful enough to do the job. Last I heard, this development program was still far from success. Star Wars proposed things like nuke driven X-ray lasers and Smart Pebble projectiles to destroy war heads in space (where there is no atmosphere), but neither of these got far off the ground technically, and the target acquisition challenges of many multiple warheads in space are in any case formidable. Actual strategic missile defense relies on (1) extremely fast interceptor missiles launched from Aegis class cruisers not too far away, preferably targeting hostile missiles during the slow moving, high heat signature boost phase; (2) theater area missile batteries targeting incoming warheads or (3) midflight interception (v challenging). All of these systems can be overwhelmed by massive numbers of independently targeted warheads as might be launched by major nuclear powers, but do have a chance with more limited strikes such as those that an emerging rogue state might launch. Bottom line: missile defense systems have progressed, but we are still many years away from having the impenetrable shield envisioned by Reagan.

  118. 118.

    NCSteve

    @chopper: Unclear what they tested. They said it was tested at 45kt and designed to go up to 200kt, which sounds more like a fusion boosted fission bomb, not a true fission-fusion (or, god help us fission-fusion-fission) hydrogen bomb. Not that I have any doubt they could build one if they wanted to.

  120. 120.

    Arclite

    @Vhh: Thanks Vhh. I was thinking ground based solid state lasers, or solid state lasers on patrolling aircraft at altitude. Ground based would have more power to maintain cohesion through the atmo. Aircraft based would be less powerful, but would be above the thickets atmo. A network of ground based lasers could target and destroy incoming missiles in the terminal phase for example.

    Lastly, pretty sure no one is pursuing chemical lasers at this point given the advances in solid state.

  122. 122.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Bill Arnold: When I shut things down last night, James Acton was arguing with Jeffrey that that table wasn’t applicable to the North Korean test site. No way to know for sure unless we know more about the test site geology and how the North Koreans emplace their test devices. It’s a general guide, though.

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