The ballistic missile launched in a test on Tuesday by the Democratic Republic of North Korea was No. 16 since Donald Trump became president. The ICBM traveled higher and farther than any previous rocket the regime in Pyongyang has sent flying. The missile was given a new name, the Hwasong-15. Amazingly, this elicited barely a mention and no juvenile tweet-blasts from Pr*sident Trump at Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un:
Experts say that with the right trajectory, the North Korean missile could potentially have flown for 8,000 miles. That would put Washington, D.C., and every other city in the United States within range, including Miami.
But is this a realistic assessment? When North Korea launched an ICBM—the Hwasong-14—July 4 and again July 28, the claim was made that it could hit cities as far east as Denver. Three scientists published an analysis at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in August arguing that this claim was in error. In its headline of the analysis, Newsweek stated: North Korean Missile Claims Are ‘A Hoax, quoting Theodore A. Postol, one of the three authors, although that term was not included in the analysis.
Postol, Markus Schiller, and Robert Schmucke, all of them employed as experts in fields relevant to their scrutiny of the missiles and their behavior, stated:
From the point of view of North Korean political leadership, the general reaction to the July 4 and July 28 launches could not have been better. The world suddenly believed that the North Koreans had an ICBM that could reach the West Coast of the United States and beyond. But calculations we have made—based on detailed study of the type and size of the rocket motors used, the flight times of the stages of the rockets, the propellant likely used, and other technical factors—indicate that these rockets actually carried very small payloads that were nowhere near the weight of a nuclear warhead of the type North Korea could have, or could eventually have. These small payloads allowed the rockets to be lofted to far higher altitudes than they would have if loaded with a much-heavier warhead, creating the impression that North Korea was on the cusp of achieving ICBM capability.
In reality, the North Korean rocket fired twice last month—the Hwasong-14—is a “sub-level” ICBM that will not be able to deliver nuclear warheads to the continental United States. Our analysis shows that the current variant of the Hwasong-14 may not even be capable of delivering a first-generation nuclear warhead to Anchorage, Alaska, although such a possibility cannot be categorically ruled out. But even if North Korea is now capable of fabricating a relatively light-weight, “miniaturized” atomic bomb that can survive the extreme reentry environments of long-range rocket delivery, it will, with certainty, not be able to deliver such an atomic bomb to the lower 48 states of the United States with the rocket tested on July 3 and July 28.
The details of their analysis are fascinating if you have the time (and stomach) for thinking about the possible devices and their trajectories in what could initiate World War III. But that analysis applies only to those two missiles, which have clearly been outdone by what Pyongyang launched Tuesday.
The key technical questions raised by the launch are 1) have the North Koreans merely tweaked into being the latest version of the missiles they sent aloft in July or have they retooled the design enough that it deserves the new moniker, and 2) was the missile carrying as heavy a load as a nuclear warhead would be assuming its scientists and engineers can miniaturize one suitably, 3) is the guidance system capable of hitting even close to a chosen target?
At The New York Times, Mark Landler, Choe Sang-Hun and Helene Cooper write:
David Wright, a scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the missile performed better than the two fired in July, and exhibited a potential range of more than 8,000 miles, able to reach Washington or any other part of the continental United States.
“It’s pretty impressive,” Dr. Wright said of the test flight. “This is building on what they’ve done before. It’s muscle-flexing to show the U.S. that they’re going to continue to make progress.”
However, Dr. Wright noted that in an effort to increase the vehicle’s range, the North Koreans might have fitted it with a mock payload that weighed little or next to nothing. So the distance traveled, while impressive, does not necessarily translate into a working intercontinental ballistic missile that could deliver a thermonuclear warhead.
Yes. They are going to continue to make progress. That being the case, it would be foolish to suggest that by this time next November they won’t have missiles that we know for certain can carry nuclear warheads to anywhere in North America.
The general consensus has long been that any preventive military attack on North Korea’s nuclear and missile-building capabilities—besides having disastrous diplomatic consequences—has a high potential for failing and simultaneously killing more people in a few days than were lost among soldiers and civilians in the entire three years of the Korean War. And, of course, the chances for igniting a larger conflagration would be far from zero.
It would be pollyanna-ish to believe that the U.S. military would for sure stop Trump from any action against North Korea. Maybe so, maybe not. But given that he has only hit the tweet button so far in his ridiculous wang-waggling at Supreme Leader Kim, maybe, crossed fingers, he has been persuaded that a strike against North Korea would be unwise. On the other hand, this is the guy who said regarding North Korean threats that he would rain “fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before” on that country and claimed with his usual smarmy disingenuousness that when it comes to nukes “the devastation is very important to me.” As we’ve seen, he’s given to impulse.
But until he leaves or is pried out of the White House, we’ll have to hope he doesn’t wake up some day in a really bad mood.
That leaves three courses of action: doing nothing, diplomacy, or building a weapon that will take out the North Korean ICBMs.
Doing nothing has some advantages. The current regime in North Korea is not going to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure or its nuclear arsenal. That dismantling will come when the leading signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty decide they really will live up to Article VI. But unless Kim really is a mad man, the regime seems highly unlikely to commit suicide by actually using any of its shiny new weapons. But there are a lot of ifs in that assumption. So it can’t be said that doing nothing isn’t a gamble.
It is despair-inducing to ponder the kind of diplomacy the U.S. is now capable of with those ignorant jackals in charge and sections of the State Department becoming hollow shells. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see Trump appointing the worst possible person to do any negotiating with Pyongyang, say John Bolton. Diplomacy should be the answer, but not with this White House running.
Postol says a weapon can be built and quickly to take out North Korean ICBMs by hitting them with a missile before they end their powered flight. Engineeringly speaking, that’s no doubt true. But if North Korea were to decide to make a surprise attack on the U.S., there would be literally minutes from the time an ICBM was fired until its powered flight ended. Detecting the launch, transmitting the alert, getting a decision to counter-launch, and blasting off the counter-missiles—all that leaves not much time for error.
Ultimately, the way to get North Korea to give up these horrific weapons is for everybody to give them up. Otherwise, somebody is going to use one or more, intentionally or by mistake.
Instead, right now, as North Korea develops its nuclear arsenal, the United States, Russia, and China are all modernizing theirs. Their total is now at least 4,000 active warheads, with another 9,400 or potentially available. Over the next three decades, the United States alone is set to spend an inflation-adjusted $1.7 trillion to build a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines, bombers, and missiles.
Derek Johnson of Global Zero wrote earlier this month that this is mistaken in more ways than one:
There are several ways to fulfill critical maintenance needs without recapitalizing thousands of nuclear weapons across all three legs of the triad. Specifically, the CBO references the May 2012 report of the Global Zero Commission on U.S. Nuclear Policy, which demonstrated that any and all deterrence requirements can be met with a greatly reduced arsenal of 900 weapons. That could save hundreds of billions of dollars and dramatically reduce the prospects of nuclear war by eliminating anachronistic liabilities from the arsenal — including hundreds of high-risk land-based nuclear missiles scattered like sitting ducks throughout the Midwest.
“This alternative force posture was developed by a high-level, nonpartisan group of former military commanders, political leaders and national security experts, led by former commander of all nuclear forces General (ret.) James E. Cartwright. It also earned the backing of President Obama and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in June 2013, ahead of Obama’s ‘Berlin proposal’ for a one-third reduction in strategic forces.
“Right now the United States should be doing everything in its power to lower the risks of nuclear conflict and reduce the number of nuclear weapons on the planet. The alternative is literally unaffordable. Congress needs to hit the brakes on Trump’s nuclear spending spree and seriously explore more realistic options before the U.S. bankrupts itself in a new nuclear arms race.”
Some will argue that even talking about reducing the gigantic, civilization-busting nuclear U.S. arsenal at a time when Pyongyang is testing ever-more-capable missiles makes no sense. In fact, it’s an important step to eventually living in a world where nobody has nukes. Otherwise, it won’t be long before there are a lot more than nine nations capable of blowing up whole cities with a single bomb.