R. James Woolsey & Dr. Peter Vincent Pry:
The mainstream media, and some officials who should know better, continue to allege North Korea does not yet have capability to deliver on its repeated threats to strike the U.S. with nuclear weapons. False reassurance is given to the American people that North Korea has not “demonstrated” that it can miniaturize a nuclear warhead small enough for missile delivery, or build a reentry vehicle for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of penetrating the atmosphere to blast a U.S. city.
Yet any nation that has built nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, as North Korea has done, can easily overcome the relatively much simpler technological challenge of warhead miniaturization and reentry vehicle design.
Indeed, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has been photographed posing with what appears to be a genuine miniaturized nuclear warhead for ballistic missiles. And North Korea does, in fact, have two classes of ICBMs—the road mobile KN-08 and KN-14—which both appear to be equipped with sophisticated reentry vehicles.
Even if it were true that North Korea does not yet have nuclear missiles, their “Dear Leader” could deliver an atomic bomb hidden on a freighter sailing under a false flag into a U.S. port, or hire their terrorist allies to fly a nuclear 9/11 suicide mission across the unprotected border with Mexico. In this scenario, populous port cities like New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, or big cities nearest the Mexican border, like San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, and Santa Fe, would be most at risk.
A Hiroshima-type A-Bomb having a yield of 10-kilotons detonated in a major city would cause about 200,000 casualties from blast, thermal, and radiation effects. North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon having an estimated yield of 20-30 kilotons. The Defense Department assesses that on January 6, 2016, North Korea may have tested components of an H-Bomb. H-Bombs are much more powerful than A-Bombs and can produce much greater casualties—millions of casualties in a big city like New York.
The notion that North Korea is testing A-Bombs and H-Bomb components, but does not yet have the sophistication to miniaturize warheads and make reentry vehicles for missile delivery is absurd.
Eight years ago, in 2008, the CIA’s top East Asia analyst publicly stated North Korea successfully miniaturized nuclear warheads for delivery on its Nodong medium-range missile. The Nodong is able to strike South Korea and Japan or, if launched off a freighter, even the United States.
In 2011, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lt. General Ronald Burgess, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea has weaponized its nuclear devices into warheads for arming ballistic missiles.
On April 7, 2015, at a Pentagon press conference, Admiral William Gortney, then Commander of North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD), responsible for protecting the U.S. from long-range missiles, warned that the intelligence community assesses North Korea’s KN-08 mobile ICBM could strike the U.S. with a nuclear warhead.
And on October 7, 2015, Gortney again warned the Atlantic Council: “I agree with the intelligence community that we assess that they [North Koreans] have the ability, they have the weapons, and they have the ability to miniaturize those weapons, and they have the ability to put them on a rocket that can range the [U.S.] homeland.”
For over a year thats a joke we dont make the transformers nor do we have them in reserve to rebuild the aging grid. Try 5 to 10 years til we are back. How many aside from the Amish know how to survive without electricity refridgeration. Food stops getting delivered, grocery stores looted empty to the last crumb in 2 days, then the water stops as the fuel runs out for the generators that run the pumps, the sewers back into basements and streets no power to hospitals the drug stores already looted, All high population centers would make Ferguson riot look like Mayberry RFD. The gangs looking for food, drugs and booze will spread to the suburbs after maybe a week or 2.
Clinton admin let the N Koreans get hands on Nukes with the same logic that Obama let Iran.
Time to turn North Koreas capittal into a smoldering crater and Kim Jong Pin-Head into a pile of scorched bones
We have the power and capacity to hack NK missile launches.
We can make then blow up near the launchpad.
Or on the ground.
And every time a launch fails Kim executes more of the very people who could have done the workaround.
China is going to have to be made to realize that they either reign in their little buddy or lose him. China prefers to have N. Korea exist as a distraction and irritant to allow them to make aggressive moves and if the threat is gone, so is China’s leverage as a moderating force.
But, these threats cannot be ignored.
That was Secretary of State Tillerson’s response to North Korea’s ballistic missile launch earlier today.
Clueless amateurs are now running the entire show, at a moment when any wrong move could have extremely serious consequences. They’re so inexperienced that they’re quite possibly clueless about the degree of their own cluelessness.