Report: NKorea may fire missile toward Hawaii

Source: Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, a Japanese newspaper said Thursday, amid escalating tensions between the communist country and the United States over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

The missile, believed to be a long-range Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles (6,500 kilometers), would be launched from North Korea's Dongchang-ni site on the northwestern coast, said the Yomiuri daily, Japan's top-selling newspaper. The report cited an analysis by the Japanese Defense Ministry and intelligence gathered by U.S. reconnaissance satellites.

The Yomiuri said the Taepodong-2 could fly over Japan and toward Hawaii, but that it would not be able to hit the main islands of Hawaii, which lie about 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers) from the Korean peninsula.

The missile launch could come between July 4 and 8, the paper said. It noted that North Korea had fired its first Taepodong-2 missile on July 4, 2006. Also, July 8 is the anniversary of the 1994 death of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung.

The Yomiuri report was the latest in mounting media speculation that the communist country could launch a long-range missile soon following its underground nuclear test on May 25.

A spokesman for the Japanese Defense Ministry declined to comment on the report. Officials from South Korea's Defense Ministry and the National Intelligence Service — the country's main spy agency — said they could not confirm it.

In Washington on Tuesday, Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it would take at least three to five years for North Korea to pose a real threat to the West Coast of the United States.

North Korea is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least half a dozen atomic bombs. The regime revealed last week that it is also producing enriched uranium. The two materials are key ingredients for making atomic bombs.

North Korea conducted its second nuclear test on May 25 following its first underground atomic blast in October 2006.

The United Nations last week punished North Korea over the May nuclear test by expanding an arms embargo and authorizing ship searches on the high seas in a bid to derail its nuclear and missile programs.

North Korea has claimed its nuclear bombs are a deterrent against the United States and accuses Washington of plotting with Seoul to topple its secretive regime — led by the unpredictable dictator Kim Jong Il who is reportedly preparing to hand over power to his 26-year-old youngest son, Jong Un.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gon062DlnM-aarORNlnhk5kDuyRwD98SSVOO1

;-)

I don't think N Korea would cooperate very well.

of fizzling out and landing near their own property line?

This could be an interesting exercise in international embarrassment for all concerned. :blush:

N. Korea long range missile lands...in N. Korea.

While U.S. "star wars" defense missile...hits air.

their short range missiles do.

and was still going strong...right up to the point when the third stage exploded...

Sometimes they blow up in midair too!

theirs blows up midair and we claim a hit :rofl:

:rofl:

I think that Jong-Il knows that he's gonna kick the bucket soon and he wants to have some kind of glorious sending off. What a nutter.

guaranteed to ruin you day.

Once!

Maybe N. Korea should check with them on how that worked.

I'm moving back there next year not to mention all the sweet people I don't even know..I don't like the sound of sitting duck no matter how faulty their systems are.

they may be batshit crazy but everyone understands the stakes of a war. At the end of any war NK would no longer exist. Conventional or nuclear.

encouragmentB-)

dupe

Just good pilots, good aircraft, dumb bombs and an excellent plan.

Time to inflate the annual missile Boogeyman no matter how ridiculous.

The Koreans have been occupied by U.S. Troops for the past 60 years. They are tired of it. They have learned how to exloit the Americans through aid to South Korea, and get North Korea to help inflate tensions on cue.

This is nothing more than another Israeli type scam to siphon of tons of money to foerign nations without any oversight. It also serves to prolong the agony of Military spending eternally.

I'd like to see America for once just wait until a real attack or threat came along and respond accordingly.

Americans, with all their hi tech weponry is so afraid of the peace that they are itching to get into any war they can at the drop of a pin.

Is busy in the closet, masturbating away, at the prospect of a few more Medals on their chests.

Not terrified, but they are on the frontlines of this lunacy. In the end there may be about as much chance of North Korea hitting Kauai as there is for the fabled "big one" earthquake to sink half of California into the ocean. But the possibility however small does exist still the same.

we have a "Big One" once every ten years or so. I can name three off the top of my head. One caused the county hospital where my dad worked to fall into its own basement, along with part of LA and a brand new chunk of freeway. Another caused the whole downtown section of my hometown to collapse, and a third flattened the part of the city where I live now. Those are just the ones I felt myself, in SoCal. There have been a few others, in Central and Northern California.

So, no, the Big One can hardly be called a fable. They're local events, causing less destruction than a major hurricane, but more than your average tornado. I'm less afraid of earthquakes than I am of wildfires, which happen every year.

If Greenland melts, Hawaii loses about half of its most usable surface area, including most of its large cities.

I think that now has a better chance of happening in twenty years than the North Koreans have of dropping a nuke on Pearl Harbor.

Can't you see that most people in this thread are trying to live in a false paradigm?

How DARE you come in with realism that no one wants to hear.

I'll need to see your Papers, Citizen.

And your Loyalty Oath.

of "a real attack or threat"

-nnnm

Yes we have troops in South Korea but to call it "occupied" is a bit of a stretch. While we have "occupied" South Korea they have become a successful first world country. They are currently 52nd out of 229 countries with $26,000 GDP. North Korea is currently 191 with $1,700.00 GDP but I guess you think that's cool. So what if they're starving to death. At least they don't have the indignity of having US troops in their country.

Man that occupation must suck.

South Korea hasn't tested developed or tested any nuclear weapons in violation of treaties that they signed. Can you say the same thing about North Korea?

To call this "another Israeli type scam" is just weird.

still very much out in the open here:

http://newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

(the money quote is on page 63 of the PDF doc)

Some of us have long believed that the "new Pearl Harbor" occurred on September 11, 2001. :tinfoilhat:

No tinfoil hat really required to believe that. I mean for god's sake the President's PDB said "Bin Laden determined to strike US". Of course these things tend to happen sooner rather than later when the President ignores the PDB.

That would be a very brazen move, launching an ICBM towards the US...although I have my doubts the damn thing could make it halfway, nonetheless it seems to be an act of war :-(

Firing the missle over Japan provides the Casus Foederis and firing at Hawaii provides Casus Belli. At the very least we should take out their launch sites. But I would also take out muntions and reactor sites as well. I mean since we're there we should eliminate as many headaches as possible.

We test-launch ICBMs 'at' other countries every time one departs Vandenburg AFB headed west to the Pacific impact zone. Plenty of Micronesian nations lie along the extended flight path of the missiles, a line which inevitably 'dead ends' on the coast of China or Pacific Russia. So China or Russia have casus belli every time we plop an ICBM into the Pacific because it was in the direction of their country? And unlike NK's duct-taped together collections of imitation SCUD parts, our ICBMs really can reach China and Russia, so wouldn't they have even greater grounds for war?

Not to mention Russia's Kamchatka impact zone puts their ICBMs on a flight path for Alaska every time they test launch one, and China's impact zone for their tests is right along the border with Mongolia and a short distance from Russia.

I would argue that as long as the impact zone is in international waters, there is no casus belli. And we didn't exercise casus foederis when the TD-1 launch in 1998 merrily flew right over Japan, so we might have ceded any grounds we have on that one now - does overflying a country by 30,000+ meters really count anyway? What does that mean for space launches by the US, Russia, France, China, India, etc? Those rockets overfly plenty of other people's turf on the way up.

At least for NASA launches, everyone knows what's about to happen--be it a shuttle launch, satellite launch, etc. kind of different when you have a nation of whackos who are hell bent on starting shit :nuke:

most of us do not know what it's up there

of test missle. They don't want any kind of misunderstanding about it later.

Orbital missions from Cape Canaveral enter international airspace within seconds of launch, as do ICBM shots from Vandenburg going over the Pacific. No nation needs permission to use international airspace, which is a good thing since there's no one to ask permission of anyway. Nations issue NOTAMs and declare closure zones in potential danger areas to ensure safety of passing aircraft and ships. That's all.

Keep in mind also the next TD-2 test will almost certainly be trying to loft another satellite -- a great way to test ICBM technology without blatantly testing ICBM technology. Therefore they don't intend for the pointy end of the missile to hit the ground. So far they've been right - the last two times it's just blown up.

If they fly anything over Japan without permission to use their air space. That can be an act of war. You have invaded their sovereignty. That provides us with Casus Foederis. Since we have treaties that prevent Japan from carrying weapons into foreign lands. Their protection would fall upon us. They are also currently and alli. So either way we have Jus Ad Bellum.

as to how high up national sovereign airspace extends. There is a general view that it stops somewhere, but no treaty or convention says where. But there is precedent in customary law that nations may overfly each other in their attempts to exercise their sovereign right to exploit space, to wit:

"...acquiesence in overflights of foreign satellites and space vehicles over national territory has given rise to a permissive rule of customary international law that states have the right to place such objects in space orbit and fly them over other states' territory, and to implied recognition that states' sovereignty over airspace does not extend infinitely into space."
- From "International Law: A Dictionary" Boleslaw A. Boczek, Scarecrow Press, 2005: p.259.

In North Korea's case, as long as they maintain that they are trying to access space (which they do), then under customary international law as it has been applied since spacefaring began, there is no need to get Japan's permission and no casus belli if they don't. Otherwise, since an easterly space shot is the best chance for reaching escape velocity and entering orbit, every nation on earth with a neighbor directly to their east would be at the mercy of that nation as to whether or not they could ever access space. Customary law therefore does not accept that any nation should be doomed by accidents of geography to never be able to exploit space.

Edited to add: and NK has already overflown Japan at least twice before during space insertion attempts. Japan protested of course, but the reality is they didn't have much of a leg to stand on. We spectacularly failed to use either of those events as a cause for war.

OOPS!

Let's just go in and get all pre-Treaty of Westphalia on their asses!

How dare they put their launch pads in the way of our space program.

Good one. :-)

If the missile is already in outer space at that point, is it really violating anybody's sovereignty? The US and Russia have spy satellites above each other's countries at all times, there's not much that either of our countries can really do about it.

No consensus, with figures of 30km, 50km, 80km, and even 120km having been bandied about at one time or another. But under customary international law it doesn't matter anyway. States have an implied sovereign right to be spacefaring.

The WTC towers weren't in international air space. Then you need tens of thousands of feet above that for aviation and aeronautical purposes. Also keeping in mind that a missile simply flying over a country is not a problem. It's missile coming in contact with the country in any way shape or form that's the problem. So you either have a space program in international air space or you've invaded a sovereign nation. That's pretty much the black and white of it.

in the impact zone. North Korea is hit or miss (so to speak) on this. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. And sometimes their missiles accidentally overfly their declared closure areas because their missiles are pretty crappy.

Oh, wait, we already had one of those.

There's a faction within the Japanese government that wants the country to rearm and possess nukes, never mind that they already have a military (called the Self Defense Force, so they can pretend that it's not a military), but its rank among world military forces is already proportionate to the country's rank in population.

Anyway, where American conservatives are playing the "Terrorists are out to get us!" card, Japanese conservatives are playing the "Kim Jong Il is out to get us!" card, and if they can scare the Americans, so much the better.

Red
Orange
Yellow

soon we are going to be admitting that W. was right.

:eyes:

or not

:eyes:

Wasn't that our entry into WW2? Maybe we should have never stolen that land from its Native people.

Blowback.

Kim Jong loves Elizabeth Taylor...can't she call him or something...set up a teleconference?

they could hit or have any intention of hitting Hawaii. They're just shooting the missile off in that general direction.

I will not hit you, but you will not appreciate the gesture. The irony is you are setting in a main battle tank and can turn "me" into a cloud of pink mist at will..

I personally hope we shoot the thing down just to shove it in their face, but some on here seem to think that the North Koreans are firing the missile AT Hawaii, they aren't. That would be an unprovoked attack and a gross act of war which would result in North Korea being turned into a sheet of glass, but that's not what's going on here. They're testing the missile and have no intention of hitting Hawaii or coming that close to it. What they do have every intention of doing is sticking their thumb in our eye by firing it off in the neighborhood of Hawaii. It would have been nice if the last UN sanctions actually had some teeth, but I guess the Chinese just weren't ready to cut off their unruly children, yet. If the Norks want to "communicate" by popping off missiles in our direction, then I say we send them a message they'll understand... blow that piece of crap out of the air before it has time to fall apart on its on.

They're acting like a bunch of assholes but they have a right to test their systems. If however the trajectory is such that we expect it to get close to a place we either own or are willing to protect including South Korea, Japan or the US I think we have the right to protect ourselves. Exactly how close I can't say.

I would love to blow it up but what if we miss? Honestly I think our system is pretty good and a hit on it would send a message but what if we miss? What kind of message does that send?

nt

The same thing that happened the last two times he did it.

if it reaches 3 stages and it looks like it is going to reach apogee and land in the us he is going to end up with his dress over his head, prom style. This is a no fuckup space.

But that would have to be a techical failure of epic proportions, or Kim Chong-il deciding he's going to go ahead and play out the 'Global Thermonuclear War' scene from Wargames, only for real. If it reaches apogee but the insertion stage fails to enter orbit, they'll try to destruct it before it comes back down. I say 'try' because the 'oh shit, blow it up now' button has failed before. Now that would get embarrassing...

Two others overflew Japan on a general line of bearing towards Hawaii. TD-1 in 1998 was well east of Japan when the orbital (3rd) stage failed and blew apart.

spilling wine and generally being a pain in the balls. Eventually mommy (china) will constrain them or someone will smack the shit out of them.

Like a real hermit, over the decades they seem to have institutionally forgotten how to interact with the rest of humanity.

I do wonder how much leverage China has anymore. North Korea's pursuit of economic and technological independence, while at horrific human cost, has left them in a position that they don't have to make nice to any foreign suppliers or trade partners.

the more and more I'm certain that Lil' Kim isn't gonna do sh!t. All this crap over the last few months is just a bunch of bluster designed to blackmail the rest of the world for aid and to keep the populace and military in line while power is transferred to the next Kim. Even though that piece of crap suped-up V-2 rocket is gonna fall apart in midair, I hope we shoot it down first just as a big F-U to Dear Leader.

It will certainly be one of the most clandestinely observed rocket launches in history. I can think of several nations working on naval, area, and theatre-defense antimissile systems that might have an interest in either lighting it up, testing electronic countermeasures on it, or shooting it down. Many others probably wish to observe improvements in guidance, range, reliability, and ECM resistance, and their own systems' ability to track the launch.

That last one may be important, because I think there may be many, many different radars lighting it up just to watch it, which could interfere with its control from the ground--at least by the North Koreans.

Fortunately, they seem to be few & far between, but there are a few on here.

Republicans can't be the only ones beating the drums of war I guess.

Before we start a war with North Korea, we might want to check with South Korea, since it's their citizens who will die in the hundreds of thousands, not ours.

if he launches into china he is proper fucked, russia, or the us. Either way if starts playing around in the nuclear arena and does something stupid, lots of people will die.

by not supporting a nuclear North Korea the U.S. is asking, no begging, North Korea to attack the U.S. thus it's the fault of the U.S. if they get missiles fired at them.

Please point out the posts where people advocate "U.S. support to a nuclear North Korea."

By the way, this OP is about a planned/proposed missile flight, not a nuclear weapon test. They're not the same thing, in case that isn't clear.

The person I replied to stated "There are some here on DU just itching for an all-out war with North Korea." A brief survey of replies to this OP provides evidence in support of that statement. My contention is that anyone spouting off about whoopin' North Korea's ass might want to consider that while they watch it on TV, hundreds of thousands of South Koreans will be dying should anyone end up provoking all-out war on the peninsula.

NK will not launch over China (wrong direction, like trying to pitch a ball into a headwind) or Russia (polar orbit). They already have and will continue to launch easterly into the Pacific - that's your best chance for getting stuff into orbit - launch east. This is no more launching 'at' or 'into' the US then when we are launching 'at' China when we fire an ICBM from California into the Pacific impact range.

The missile will most likely (once again) try to orbit a satellite. OF COURSE it is a flight-test of ICBM technology, but as long as they're trying to get into orbit, they have a sovereign right to launch their TD-2. Even if they flat-out say it's an ICBM test, as long as the impact area is in international waters they have have as much right to do so as we do.

so you can support the UN saying they dont get to play ICBM school , or the DPRK.

This is a silly issue, they are toothless dickless wankers trying to appear something other than a failed dirt eating disaster. They are not going to do anything other than sit there and starve.

S. Korea and Japan say that includes satellite launches too. Matter of debate. As long as they use the launch to try to put up a satellite, they MAY have enough of a fig leaf to get away with it.

Look, I think they're an abyssmal failure of a festering sore too -- a hereditary Marxist monarchy?! WTF? Of course they're a threat to regional peace and stability, and of course the world would be better off without that regime in power. If they had a mascot it would be Gollum from Lord of the Rings. I just don't want people going all crazy and blowing this launch of their half-ass bottle rocket out of proportion. The thing looks like something made in a garage using plans from the back of a comic book, and it works about as well. You gotta admit it would be regretable (to say the least) if this spiraled out of control and led to a few hundred thousand North and South Koreans dead. And with those unpredictable trolls in Pyongyang in charge, it is not beyond the realm of possibility. Hell, in 2002 their navies had a running gun battle over who gets the best crab fishing spots off the west coast!

Let them test-fail their firework. They have one launch tower, and it takes weeks to assemble the next one. A long-range threat they are not. They just want to play one on TV, and I'd rather we not help them.

Their missile does not have the capability to put anything into orbit. It lacks the thrust and control to be a space launch vehicle. It works like a giant mortar, lobbing a payload up, followed by gravity pulling it down. The trajectory is parabolic.

You're mistaken about the incapacity to fire toward Russia or China. Also, these countries are immediately adjacent to North Korea. No polar orbit is needed for Russia, and the headwind argument has nothing to do with ballistic missile ranging, so ditto China.

The reason they won't fire toward Russia or China is because North Korea would cease to exist about fifteen minutes later. The regimes in those countries practice realpolitik and have no use or patience for political correctness or debate. Review Tiananmen Square or Grozny for more understanding how they do business.

As someone who was once paid to be right on this subject, I can attest that you are wrong pretty much across the board.

Point by point:

Your title: "ICBM=Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. By definition, ballistic is sub-orbital."

Utter nonsense. Ballistic is sub-orbital only if that's how you program the missile to fly. Program it to go on a trajectory that leads to orbit, and the only limitation will be if it has the juice to achieve escape velocity. At their hearts there is little to no difference between a space launch vehicle and an ICBM. Only the payload they're trying to deliver and where they're trying to deliver it differs. Do you know how we got rid of our old Titan II ICBMs? We pulled them out of their silos, put satellites in place of the nukes, and used them as SLVs. Same way the Russians expended their old SS-18/R-36 ICBMs. According to you this was not possible, yet those satellites made it up there somehow.

You said "Their missile does not have the capability to put anything into orbit. It lacks the thrust and control to be a space launch vehicle. It works like a giant mortar, lobbing a payload up, followed by gravity pulling it down. The trajectory is parabolic."

Utter nonsense. Not only is the TD-2 perfectly capable of putting a satellite into orbit, the less-capable TD-1's third stage was nearly at orbital velocity and accelerating during its satellite insertion attempt in 1998, when it had a catastrophic failure. So you assert that the far more powerful TD-2 can't do what the TD-1 was clearly in the process of doing in 1998? Uninformed rubbish. ICBMs do not work 'like giant mortars,' and if theirs did it would be of no military utility at all. Its accuracy at intercontinental ranges would be measured in tens, if not hundreds, of kilometers in that case. Useless as a weapon delivery system. No military rocket system aside from some battlefield rockets work like you seem to imagine. Even the lowliest SRBMs have inertial navigation systems and thrust vectoring devices or control surfaces to do in-flight course corrections. US and Russian ICBMs carry celestial navigation and GPS guidance in addition to their inertial systems, and some even have terminal homing systems to lock onto and home onto the intended target. Their TD-1 and -2 missile systems absolutely have at least inertial navigation computers and thrust vectoring guidance systems. By the way a space launch vehicle's trajectory is generally parabolic as well. Since the top of the parabola is tangential to the desired orbital plane, so it doesn't come back down the other side of the parabola. It just stays up there.

You said "You're mistaken about the incapacity to fire toward Russia or China. Also, these countries are immediately adjacent to North Korea. No polar orbit is needed for Russia, and the headwind argument has nothing to do with ballistic missile ranging, so ditto China."

I have no clue what you're trying to say. Launching west for an orbital insertion is stupid beyond comprehension, which probably explains why no one does it. It's not a 'headwind argument.' It's the fact that you're launching AGAINST the rotational vector of the earth versus WITH it. Ever wonder why all lat-oriented satellites orbit from west to east? That's why. Launching west for a ballistic missile test with an expected downrange impact in China would be an act of war v. China, so another non-starter, which you appear to agree with(?). If North Korea tries for a polar orbit, they either overfly Russia or Australia, which should be evident from even a passing glance at a map of the world. And it's both a velocity-neutral launch AND a more complicated orbital insertion, so why make it harder when there's no reason? If you're going to overfly another country anyway, launch east over Japan. No brainer, which is why they keep doing it.

You said "The reason they won't fire toward Russia or China is because North Korea would cease to exist about fifteen minutes later. The regimes in those countries practice realpolitik and have no use or patience for political correctness or debate. Review Tiananmen Square or Grozny for more understanding how they do business."

No, the reason they don't launch due west or north is almost exclusively about physics and the technical difficulties involved. China launches east to get into latitudinal orbits, Russia launches east to get into latitudinal orbits, we launch east to get into latitudinal orbits, France launches east to get into latitudinal orbits...see a pattern? If the intent is to reach space, which the last two tries were, they won't launch west because of physics and they won't launch north because of physics and technical difficulty. The fact it would utterly piss off China or Russia is beside the point. By the way I'm well aware of how Russia and China 'do business.' I've been in that business for 20 years. If you think for one second that Russia or China would launch an all-out nuclear attack on North Korea just for overflying their territory with a missile, I am at a loss for what to say. Hell, I'll go one better: if the NKs plop a TD-2 right into the Gobi Desert and then moon Beijing by vidoephone, China will not retaliate with a nuclear attack. You claim they practice Realpolitik and then ascribe to them a wildly irrational knee-jerk response that would have massive negative implications for themselves? Then I'm not convinced you understand the principles of Realpolitik.

Ballistic missiles are not orbital. By effin' definition.

:crazy:

To wit: a ballistic missile follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath, with intent to deliver its payload to a deterministic target. The missile is guided during the initial powered phase of flight and then its path is governed by trajectory laws. Minor vector adjustments may be applied during descent for MIRV warheads, but the payload's geographical destiny is locked in before the missile is even launched.

Taepodong-2 missiles in their most advanced configuration are able to deliver a roughly 1000lb payload about 4000-4500 miles (on a good day). The Taepodong-2 can also theoretically be outfitted with a one-shot solid motor stage to provide additional thrust to take a small satellite payload to orbit velocity - and I mean small. NK is 0 for 3 on long-range missile targeting so far, and 0 for infinity on anything near an orbital insertion.

But...even if a TD-2 somehow got a warhead into orbit (for whatever unimaginable reason) how would they take it out of orbit and deliver it to a target? By definition, an object in orbit is already in free fall, so it cannot just be "dropped" like a bomb. Now you have to have an elaborate mechanism to decelerate the payload, bleed off its huge kinetic energy safely, and then target it.

Why am I even discussing this? It's insane.

North Korea has not demonstrated any working re-entry vehicle. Accurate delivery of a ballistic weapons payload in the near future seems unlikely. Successful orbital insertion of a payload is about as likely as Cheney joining Greenpeace.

Go on and on about orbital flight plans if you must, but that's *not relevant* to suborbital ballistic missile launches. Your state of high dudgeon tells me this isn't about flight mechanics and payload delivery anyway.

As for your last paragraph, you've constructed a strawman worthy of being set afire at Burning Man next year. I said that China or Russia would smack NK down if NK launched an armed nuclear missile at them. This does not require a sophisticated understanding of how those countries work. I don't know where your missile overflight notion came from but not from me.

You're welcome to your opinions - the whole wheelbarrow load of them - but I'll keep mine. ;)

the orbit is not inherent to the design - if you point it straight up instead of on a ballistic arc then it will leave the atmosphere.

Atlas, Titan, R-7 (Sputnik) and the SS-18 ( Dnepr Space Launch System (SLS) are all good examples

Most of the Soviet orbital launch systems were military missile designs.

Hell, the United States' first manned rockets were based on Redstone boosters, a purely military ICBM-based design. (Those were suborbital flights, of course.)

ICBM refers to a warhead delivery system that uses a ballistic trajectory. Otherwise, it wouldn't be called an ICBM.

ICBM weapons payloads are *always* delivered ballistically. Warheads directed at an enemy country are never put into orbit, for what I hope are obvious reasons dealing with the laws of physics. The costs and difficulties of accelerating to orbital speed are immense, and the even higher costs and difficulties of decelerating from orbit are even more immense. And for what? So that you could expend extraordinary effort trying to re-acquire a target while your enemy watches everything with radar and optics? Give them a huge chunk of time to figure out what to do (like fire an ICBM at you?) It's ludicrous.

The North Korean TD-2 has been in continouse development since 1987. Twenty years later they still haven't gotten it right. Its second stage is a rehabbed Scud design from the USSR, ca. 1955. The missile has had exactly zero successful military test launches. (No, getting it off the launch pad doesn't count.) The idea that P.O.S. is a capable orbital launch vehicle is one of the biggest laffers I've seen here in a long time.

I don't want to see it, and I'm pretty familiar with the Korean two-step as described elsewhere in this thread. The North Koreans bark a lot, and loudly, primarily because their shitty dictatorship can't feed its citizens, if you ask me.

But North Korea is the number one country in the world to steer away from. They are butt-ass crazy, armed to the teeth, and totally indoctrinated with a world-view which I can't begin to empathize with or understand--or, with the exception of the last part, just like us. From my point of view the safe bet is to contain and engage them, while hoping that the Kim line collapses soon.

It could land just shy of North Korea. Just a test you know just as they are testing. Sort of a fire 1 for testing purposes only.

be shot down by American technology.

:scared: :scared: :scared:

:sarcasm:

Now that I realize that's pronounced "Type O' Dong" :P , I'll be going about my business pretty much as usual rather than heading for the ol' neighborhood bomb shelter. :eyes:

who knows, maybe he'll be sane. Or at least saner than his father. :shrug:

> Or at least saner than his father.

says we can do. That is the billion pound gorilla in the room that truly calls the shots.

I figured they were involved in this somehow...Don't you people understand how EVERTHING IS CONNECTED?!?!?!?
:eyes: :nuke: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: