What I’ve gotten from the news is that North Korea probably has nuclear weapons, but lacks a missile to put them on.
So my question is this:
Could they put a nuke on a weather balloon and send it over to America like the Japanese tried with conventional bombs?:eek:
I assume advances in weather technology might make this more feasible now than 50 years ago.
I think the head of the CIA stated they have the capability to hit the West Coast
And the Japanese don’t seem to think that the North Koreans can hit Japan.
My bolding.
I just read this article off NY Times website.
NY Times
The only way they’re going to deliver a bomb to the West Coast is if they FedEx it over. If the director of the CIA says otherwise, he doesn’t know jack. But that wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. In recent memory.
Remember the “strong evidence of WMD” in Iraq?
North Korea’s most likely tarket is South Korea, the Japan. The US isn’t even on the hit parade. The Illmatic is a little pufferfish of a tin-pot dictator, and I’d put long odds on his maintaining body temperature if he starts to threaten anyone with nukes. He may not have a pinky’s grasp on reality, but I get the impression his top generals probably have some kind of survival instinct.
Stranger
I certainly hope the guy’s wrong. Our intel system is terrible, and I hope they’ve wrong again
Here is the info I was going by: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/02/12/us.nkorea/
I didn’t realize my recollection of him saying it is over two years old, so it probably has been revised
Why couldn’t North Korea just put the nuke on a boat with a suicide crew, and take it to a port in CA and detonate it?
No reason at all, pal o’ mine, no reason at all…
Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. My apologies in advance to the mods for inserting logic into this thread.
'Cause the “suicide crew” would probably hand it over to the Coast Guard for a bottle of Scotch and half a pack of Marlboros. 
It takes a particularly twisted society and intense conditioning from childhood (re: feudal Japan) to convince people to sacrific themselves for a smirking dictator. For a threatened child, yes. For Kim Jong Il? I doubt it.
But, yeah, you could sneak it over in a boat and leave it tied up in Long Beach Harbor, Port of Los Angeles, and unless they were caught and inspected entering US waters, nobody would know until its all over.
It would mean utter destruction for North Korea, though. You can’t hide a plot like that forever, and frankly, I don’t think the Illumatic would long survive the 9mm bullet some semi-sane general would put in the back of his head. Unlike Bond movies, henchmen in real life have a sense of self-preservation.
Not saying the guy isn’t dangerous, but there are limits to how close his people will come to going over a cliff with him. IMHO.
Stranger
Yeah, a suicide crew would be open to reason. Wouldn’t a suicide crew have no sense of self-preservation?
A nuclear bomb, its casing and all the equipment needed to make it go boom, is pretty heavy. You’d need a really big baloon to float it over the Pacific Ocean.
Even if (and it’s a really big IF) you got lucky enough to find a wind current that would take it over some place like Seattle, the fact remains that it would take a long time to get there. Long enough to detect it, inspect it and shoot it down into the ocean.
How much does it weigh, exactly?
IIRC, to catch the jet stream you need about 10 miles of altitude. If my back-of-the-envelope calculation is right, you need 300,000 cubic ft of helium to lift a 1-ton payload at that altitude. That’s a 90-ft diameter sphere. You need a little extra to lift the weight of the balloon envelope itself, but it doesn’t seem out of the question.
So wait, you bankrupt your country and risk international reprisals to build a nuclear device and then you decide to deliver it using a hot air balloon?
Why not just put it on a raft and hope that the currents take it where you want it?
The North Koreans, even if they have a nuclear device, likely don’t have the capacity to make a lot. Or even two. They would have to make sure that if they were going to use it, it would be worthwhile.
Not as heavy as you might think, and far less than the one ton that scr4 assumed.
According to my copy of the Nuclear Weapons Databook, Vol. 1, the majority of all U.S. nuclear weapons types (as of 1982) weigh less than 500kg (i.e. half a ton). Among the lightest was the Davy Crockett warhead, which weighed only 23 kg (51 lb), and had a yield of 0.25 kilotons. (There were also nuclear artillery shells, but they had been retired by the time the book was published, and it didn’t give their weights.) The Davy Crockett was retired in 1972, so you can probably find them on eBay now.
According to the handy yield-to-weight ratio table the book provides, it seems the best bang for the buck would be the W80 warhead for the Tomahawk cruise missile. At only 123 kg (270 lb), it has a yield of 250 Kt, about 20 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
Of course, the North Koreans aren’t likely to have made such efficient weapons themselves, but they might be able to put together a fairly destructive bomb under half a ton. Or they could pick up one of those missing Russian suitcase bombs on the black market.
Regarding the NY Times article that Scarface Z linked, please keep in mind that Ishihara is the governor of Tokyo. His statements about NorK missiles should be given the same weight as Giuliani making a statement on Syria’s anti-aircraft capabilities.
This part, however worries me:
as I can think of a lot of things he’d be fantasizing about doing.
http://www12.mainichi.co.jp/news/mdn/search-news/923416/ishihara20foreigners-0-6.html
No, it would have to be a helium or hydrogen balloon. I don’t think it’s a ridiculous idea, if you don’t need to hit a specific target. The jetstream is usually over 50 mph, so it’ll only take a few days. Some control of trajectory might be possible by adjusting altitude, if they can maintain radio communication using tracking ships.
Of course, a better use of those ships might be to just carry it to the US, as already suggested… Or they could launch the balloon very close to the US coast. Do North Korean ships often sail to America? Would the Pentagon notice if a North Korean cargo ship was approaching San Francisco?
By the way, does anyone have a feel for how soon a balloon would be detected? Say few hundred kg worth of hardware suspended from a polyester balloon. I’d guess the envelope itself is transparent to radar.
I’m no expert on N Korea, but it is my understanding that the ctizenry of North Korea, especially the ones who have lived under the regime all of their lives, are subjected to some pretty heavy duty indoctrination starting in the cradle, leading up through school, and continuing throughout their lives. I’m sure there would be enough impressionable people in a country the size of NK to pull it off. For that matter, you might not even need a ‘suicide crew’; just have a ‘spy crew’ or ‘infiltration crew’ with the captain being the triggerman (kind of like, if I understand correctly, many of the 9-11 terrorists were not aware that the mission was going to end on the side of a skyscraper). That said, why is it always about the US? I agree that NK would be much more likely to use it against S Korea or Japan, as Stranger on a Train (on preview - whom you may be familiar with :D) already stated.
A suicide mission would probably work fine if more rational minds failed. As other posters have pointed out, baloons would be a poor choice because of they can’t be guided accurately and they aren’t reliable.
If irrational minds were at work, the mission would only represent the beginning of the suicide.
We had a contingent of folks in the US who were anti-war, anti-overseas involvment of any kind before WWII. We don’t hear too much about them because of Pearl Harbor. My guess is that setiment for a negotiated solution would plummet and those in favor of returning the favor would skyrocket (for a few days anyway). There would no longer be much need of exhaustive proof of a nuclear program and not much reason to delay an immediate reprisal attack since more could be on the way.
If they have the capability to hit the US, I think the smartest thing would be to threaten the US.
We did this with the USSR in regards to Cuba. We stated that if missiles are launched from Cuba, we will retaliate on the USSR. Basically telling them to keep a short leash on Cuba
NK would probably state that if any nation tries to take them out, be it the USA, ROK, Japan or even China, the USA will be held responsible. Basically telling us to protect North Korea, to protect ourselves