If North Korea nukes Japan I doubt there will be any way to stop the Japanese retaliation - they’ll beat us the Pongyang if they have to swim the ocean naked and attack with sharp, pointy sticks. They’ve already been nuked once (twice, if you want to get fussy) and they survived it - psychologically, they may be in a better position to deal with such an attack than almost anyone else.
And they will be very, very, VERY angry…
But if we start being attacked by nukes on balloons Starwars Missile Defense might be able to shoot them down!
what could they retaliate with? I am sure the North Korean airforce and army is 10X japan’s which is deliberately not meant to be an offensive but a defensive force
Except that we have real, physical evidence of North Korea’s missile program.
North Korea has developed the Taepo Dong series of missiles, which are basically a bunch of Scuds put together. The Taepo Dong 1 can reach all of Japan and South Korea with a payload of several hundred kilograms. It was used to try to put a satellite in orbit several years ago, and there was a failure after the missile passed over Japan, and the thing crashed into the Pacific.
There is also work on the Taepo Dong 2, which is a three-stage rocket with ICBM ranges. However, tests of all of North Korea’s long range missiles have basicly been fronzen since 1998 or so, so we don’t know exactly what this rocket is capable of. However, there is evidence that North Korea has started foreign sales of all of these rockets, even the long range ones.
Now, can the Taepo Dong 2 reach the West Coast? We know that it is several rockets strapped together, so its range is in excess of 10,000 km with a payload large enough to carry a nuclear weapon – a true ICBM. However, does it work?
My estimation is that it seems to work about as well as the incipient missile defense that the US deployed in Alaska last year. It is truly the blind defending against the blind.
Weeeelll, I’ve cough done a little work with ballistic missiles, and I’m more than a little doubtful of the NK missile program. You’re right that the Taep’o-dong is a development off of the Scud missile, which itself is a somewhat improved German V2 rocket. (Actually, the second stage of the Taep’o-dong 1 is essentially a Scud modified to attach to a solid first stage engine.) The Scud is essentially 1950’s technology and shows its age. Even the standard Scub is notoriously inaccurate. Saddam Hussain’s attempts to extend its range met with very deleterious effects due to becoming destabilized after turnover, and for numerous technical reasons it just is an inherently inaccurate and obsolete system.
Also, going from a single stage rocket (like the Scud) to a multistage booster is a more than proportional amount of complexity. The interstaging events (where an exhausted engine is discarded) are very, very sensitive to proper sequence, and the vibrational characteristics of a multistage stack are fiendishly complicated. In our (US) several decade development program to build accurate and reliable ICBMs–a project of such magnitude that it dwarfs the Manhattan Project and is comperable in complexity only to the development of the Saturn V booster–we routinely failed missile after missile in testing.
The North Koreans have some benefit of prior knowledge in that they can build off of the mistakes of the USA and USSR programs, but even with that developing an even modestly accurate and reliable intercontinental vehicle will require a lot of testing and an expendature of resources that they just don’t have. Heck, even Boeing, Northrop, Lockheed, Orbital, and other American companies who have been building these things for years have routine failures with known systems. Look at the Delta IV debacle that Boeing had a couple of years back, or the problems Boeing/Lockheed/Orbital has had with the GMD booster which is supposed to be COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) technology.
My estimation: They’re a real threat to South Korea. If I were Japanese, I’d be a little concerned. If I lived in San Francisco or Los Angeles (and I do), I wouldn’t let it interfere with my sleep.
Now that statement is quite on point. Actually, the GMD system still lacks the BMC3 (Battle Management, Command, Control and Communications) system needed to direct it, so the boosters in the ground up in Alaska are little more than window dressing for a political storefront. Gah. Don’t get me started.
Stranger
The NY Times had an interesting article today on the situation and how Japan is using an unusual economic pressure on North Korea. Japan is requiring all ships that land at its ports to have a certain amount of insurance in order to take care of oil spills.
Evidently, one of North Korea’s most lucrative economic outlets is crab fishing. And the Japanese love crab. But North Korean ships can get insurance for the most part. And Japan has announced that it is going to start enforcing the insurance regulation laws.
So the North Koreans might have to talk to Japan to settle this issue.
Thats why we have the SDI program, to protect us from boats with suic…
wait… what?
Just a piddling nitpick, but they don’t call it “SDI” anymore. Now it’s “NMD” (National Missile Defense).
Why?
The same reason that I had to have “10X” trainng two years ago, and why I had to have “Six Sigma” training this year. In other words, NGFR.
In other breaking news, the government to spend billions of dollars on completely worthless pork-barrel projects while cutting spending on education and transportation.
We now return you to your regular program of white noise.
Stranger
I sometimes have the Silent Wind of Death. I think it’s the onions.
We now return you to your regular program of “white” noise.
NurseCarmen.
If either a boat or a balloon carrying a NK nuke is intercepted by the US, would we be justified in reprogramming the warhead and dropping it on PyongYang? Or would we be fearful of an international outcry? (In which case, I think a conventional strike would probably occur.)
Why would a starving, nearly bankrupt, basket case of a country that’s spent a huge proportion of its GDP and managed to alienate the world community risk strapping one of its few nuclear warheads to a balloon that’s guided by something so highly variable as wind current? The envisioned Lumbering Ballon of Death would travel at a snail’s pace and appear quite easily on US radar. Straffing this sitting duck above deep water would neutralize the risk, and a 10-30 KT payload splashed in deep water would do nothing re: generating killer waves.
The very idea doesn’t compute.
Not only that. What if it hits, Canada? Does NK want to risk Canada going shithouse on them, I don’t think so. :dubious:
I sometimes have the Silent Wind of Death too. The dogs get up and leave the room. Sometimes even I have to run from it.
Silent Wind of Death would be a cool name for a war game.
I don’t think li’l Kim will be launching any nuclear balloons. If he attacks Japan, he would find that they still know how to deal out some serious payback. If he attacks the U.S. there would be nothing left of his little empire. Nothing at all.
Theoretically, a balloon could follow the jet stream. It would be big, clumsy, and slow. It would probably be very inaccurate. It would be easily shot down as soon as it showed up on any radar.
Maybe Kim should use a giant arrow, like on F Troop. It would be about as practical :rolleyes:
No. We’d kill tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of people whose culpability is only that they were unfortunate to be born in the shadow of a dictatorship. Robert McNamara, in the documentary The Fog Of War, notes that had the US lost the war against Japan, he, General Curtis LeMay, and everybody else in the Army’s 20th Air Force Command would justifiably have been put on trial for the firebombing of Japan, especially Tokyo. The situation is analgous.
But we would be well and justified to demand that the North Korean government/army/whomever turn over Kim Jong Il and anyone involved in the plot, plus open up their facilities to inspection, or we’d retaliate by destroying any confirmed and suspected facilities with low-grade nuclear tactical strikes, which would be of virtually no challenge to us. IMHO.
Of course, there’s a certain hypocracy in that we continue to maintain a substantial nuclear arsenal while demanding that the rest of the world (except the permenant Security Council nations) unilaterally disarm, and while that remains other nations are going to feel justified in building up their own nuclear arsenals. But at this point, they’d probably do that regardless of the state of our armory.
Stranger
Dudley Do-Right, to the rescue!
Stranger
I was thinking, “That sound like a katana move that Pai Mei would have taught The Bride in a future Kill Bill 3” The perfect complement to the Five Point Exploding Heart Technique
You must return the Jade Sword of Destiny!
North Korea is on the list of “non-entrant” countries. Meaning, North Korean ships may not enter US waters except in the cases of distress, innocent passage, force majure, etc. Even if a N Korean ship entered US waters under one of those exceptions, it would recieve a level of scrutiny from LE the likes of which are rarely seen these days, that would undoubtedly include radiation detection.
Because they are a bankrupt, corrupt, basket case of a country, lead by a bankrupt, corrupt, basket case of a leader. They have nothing left to lose, and plenty of people to help lose it.
When I saw the thread title, I immediately thought of fallout. What are the wind patterns over North Korea? If North Korea decided to launch a dozen cobalt bombs straight up into the high-level wind currents, who would end up with the rain?
Two points here:
One would assume that, if North Korea decided to send a nuclear conquistador they would do so under a nom de plume rather than a ship under their own flag. Commercial vessels and private yachts over a certain size (I think it’s300 tonnes displacement, but the USCG rules are so convoluted that I can’t find a clear reference immediately) have to register 24 hours prior to entering port, but unless the CG has some specific reason to be suspicious they won’t necessarily come out an inspect the vessel before it anchors in port.
Detection of radiation is an iffy thing. Pu[sub]239[/sub] and u[sub]235[/sub] are unstable, but not massively so, and with a modest amount of lead shielding one can block out enough radiation (gammas and neutrons) that it is undiscernable from environmental radiation. Better yet, you could tow it submerged, where the water would act as an absorber. Most of the radiation that is measured around nuclear fuel is the “low level” radiation in other elements, like carbon, that is the result of irradiation by neutron flux from the heavier elements. Deuterium and tritium (used in multi-stage weapons) is “more” radioactive, but they give off mostly betas which can be blocked by a thickness of aluminum foil.
If someone were determined to bring a weapon into the US by sea it would be virtually impossible to prevent it, even if you knew that (but not where or when) it was going to happen beforehand. However, it would be insanity, not only on the part of the bloated-head bombastic running that country but also of the whole line of people who would have to participate in the action. It’s easy to see how a stateless religious fanatic could convince followers to do such a thing; it’s more difficult to envision a group of men, rooted and restricted to a geographic location and with nowhere to run to, agreeing to such a suicidal action.
Not saying it couldn’t happen–the Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t make any sense, either, and it just about resulted in a catastrophic exchange–but I’m not losing too much sleep over it at this point. The situation does bear watching though. And I’m glad I don’t live in South Korea.
Stranger