I don’t really have anything to add to this discussion, but in case anyone’s missed this story, the North Korean state media has released a photo of their “war room” complete with a map of their “US Mainland Strike Plan.”
It’s clearly propaganda, but I don’t even have a comment about that. I just wanted to point out the North Korean Generals’ comically large hats. 
It’s been making me laugh all morning long.
That is all.
Why does South Korea don’t have anti missile that can shoot down any nuke before getting there like what the US has?
How do you know North Korea does not have big nukes like this? They could have got some from Russia or China.
And South Korea does NOT have anti missile that can shoot down big nukes like this that the US has.
If they did, they would test them instead of the smaller ones they’ve been testing. And China in particular is opposed to North Korea’s nuclear program. They’re very unhappy about the testing. So they wouldn’t give them nuclear weapons, now would they?
The US does not have such a system either.
SK is in danger mainly from North Korean artillery shells. Nothing can intercept those reliably.
My wild-a***d-guess is that N. Korea tried to build a large-yield (20-100 Kt) fission device which gave a miserable 8 Kt fizzle- so they saved face by claiming it was a test of a reduced yield tactical nuke.
South Korea is building an ABM network that’s due to be complete by 2015. This may be a factor that’s causing North Korea to push for an offensive now.
A legal question on the 1953 Armistice: who is North Korea technically at war with? While the bulk of international troops fighting the North Koreans were American forces, they were technically fighting as part of a United Nations command. When the Armistice was signed, General Harrison signed as a representative of the UN.
With no peace treaty ever signed, the war technically is still ongoing. Is North Korea therefore legally at war with every country in the United Nations? Does this include the People’s Republic of China, which joined the UN in 1971?
I doubt it, as North Korea (also a UN member) would then be at war with itself, too.
There’s no evidence they have anything in the 1 Mt+ yield range. For one, nuclear tests give off signatures that simply cannot be hidden, so we know anytime in the world a nuclear weapon is detonated. In the case of North Korea, we know when their three nuclear tests were, and none exceeded 20 Kt, vastly weaker than the 1 Mt+.
Additionally, nuclear weapons in the yield range of a few tens of Kt is the simplest nuclear technology that is similar to the weapons first developed by the United States in the 1940s. Larger weapons, in the multiple megaton range, are much more complicated and require more sophisticated technology across the board to refine the necessary materials and engineer the device itself. There’s simply no evidence that North Korea has made such strides.
As for the United States or South Korea or anyone having anti-ballistic missile technology, the size of the nuclear warhead isn’t what determines our ability to shoot down such weapons. It’s not a matter of “bigger warheads = harder to shoot down.” Instead, what should be understood about ABM technology is right now we have a fewer pieces of semi-working technology that have successfully intercepted missiles in flight. They have a contentious record as many people debate the metrics used, but we have knocked some missiles out of flight with ABM technology in war.
However, we’re talking relatively slow moving cruise missiles being launched at an area that has one of these ABM installations. Even then, our success rate isn’t great. It’s better than nothing, but not great.
Large nuclear missiles from countries like China or Russia will be on extremely fast missiles that are launched at very long range ballistic trajectories. The missiles actually I believe technically enter space during part of their flight path, and on reentry the missiles launch multiple warheads in multiple directions. We essentially have no technology whatsoever that can stop that at present, and even if we ever developed such ABM technology it’s doubtful it could ever reliably catch enough of a percentage of incoming warheads to be worthwhile.
I don’t believe all ABM efforts are worthless, but I think if we ever find a comprehensive defense against fast and large barrages of missile attacks it’ll be directed energy weapons. Basically the Star Wars program in the 80s was the sort of technology you’d need. Problem was it wasn’t really feasible in the 80s and even in the 2010s we have some companies like Northrop-Grumman that have some working prototype beam weapons for applications like surface weapons on warships and etc…we’re really far away from anything on the ABM front from directed energy weapons in terms of delivered weapon system for field use.
So South Korea doesn’t have any sort of effective ABM shield because we don’t have one either. Further, during the Cold War the U.S. actually tested artillery launched nuclear warhead concepts which wouldn’t be hard for the North to develop and would be probably more reliable on the peninsula itself.
Also, countries don’t give other countries nukes. It’s never happened, and it probably never will. What would be the point?
At the risk of going off-topic:
If NO body EVER gives ANY body a nuke:
1.Does Israel have nukes?
2. Where did they come from (the U238 or whatever - I’ll grant they have the precision material and machining technologies)?
It is my understanding they “stole” the super-hot stuff from the US while we carelessly left the building unlocked one night.
Back to DPRK and arms:
Does the US have a “bunker buster” type device which could reliably take out the centrifuge cascade(s) they use to refine materials? Does China?
If so, why do those facilities still exist?
While strictly true, there is a bit of sharing of nuclear weapons. The US has provisioned for certain NATO countries to have access to elements of the US nuclear arsenal (wiki on nuclear sharing). I believe both France and the UK have similar provisions but haven’t deployed any of their weapons in other nations.
While the weapons are carefully accounted for and still nominally controlled by the US, they can be deployed by the armed forces of other countries.
It’s not really sharing, I guess, but it’s not too far off. Of course, the suggestion that anybody would do anything remotely like that with North Korea is dubious at the very least.
And after the breakup of the USSR, some of the resulting smaller states gave their nuclear arsenals back to Russia. Of course, Russia already had nukes, so it isn’t quite the same thing as handing over a nuclear device to a previously non- nuclear nation.
Because even if we can destroy them, that would have a significant chance of causing them to fire off their artillery and flatten Seoul.
I think this is some thing the US is working on and hope to have it up by 2015 or 2016.
That is highly unlikely. As said, even hitting much slower weapons under ideal conditions is hard for us, and we still can’t do it well. With a multi-warhead ICBM, we’re talking about multiple targets coming from multiple directions so fast that they’ll outrun the shockwave of an explosion unless you set it off right in front of them.
And even if you have such a defense system, the enemy can just send two, or three, or ten ICBMs to overwhelm it - and with a nuke, only one warhead needs to get past. The “Star Wars” idea of an impenetrable shield was always a joke.
I agree you can’t stop a major nuclear attack. But North Korea isn’t capable of launching a major nuclear attack. The best estimates for their nuclear arsenal are that they have twenty warheads; more common estimates are they may have less than ten.
So it’s not like defending against an American or Russian attack where hundreds of warheads are coming and even a small surviving fraction will destroy the target country. North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is small enough that any missile that gets shot down represents a significant decrease in the size of the attack.
According to The Bomb in the Basement, France and Israel cooperated so closely they essentially had a single joint nuclear program for years. de Gaulle ended the cooperation, and the Israelis were able to complete the project on their own.