#BOMB. JAPAN. WITH THERMONUCLEAR MISSILES.

[buggitino]

i love shin godzilla they really said "politicians bad except the autistic ones"

[certainwoman]

Kahn didn’t know it at the time, but as Daniel Ellsberg later revealed, the ‘doomsday machine’ was only a slight extension of US nuclear designs. While the RAND intellectuals were theorising, the military continued to work on actual nuclear war plans, the details of which were kept secret even from US presidents. Strategic Air Command’s Emergency War Plan 1-49 included a list of seventy cities on which thermonuclear bombs would be dropped, from Moscow and St Petersburg to Berlin, Potsdam, Warsaw and most of what is now Ukraine and Belarus. In 1960, the generals completed a comprehensive plan for a first-strike attack, the Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP-62. In the case of non-nuclear conflict with the Soviet bloc, the US would drop 3423 nuclear bombs on Soviet territory, Eastern Europe and China (the RAF was supposed to participate). Every city in the Soviet Union and China was to be destroyed. The power of the nuclear weapons to be used on Moscow alone was four thousand times that of the bomb used on Hiroshima. Military analysts predicted that around 600 million people would be killed, including 100 million in Western Europe and 100 million in neutral countries adjacent to the Sino-Soviet bloc such as Afghanistan, India and Japan. It would be hard to argue that any document in history contains greater evil; there is nothing in the Nazi archives that approaches it.

Advocating non-proliferation is a common hobby for retired American officials with time on their hands and a less than clean conscience. Were the US actually committed to limiting nuclear weapons, it would at the very least have to declare a ‘no first use’ policy for its own nuclear arsenal. The Soviet Union, China and India have all made such a pledge in the past (Britain and France have not). Kaplan takes seriously Obama’s professed desire for ‘a world without nuclear weapons’, but the Obama administration refused to declare no first use. Its successes on nuclear matters – the Iran nuclear deal and the new START arms reduction treaty with Russia, signed in 2010 – were overshadowed by its commitments to build the next generation of US nuclear weapons systems. New ‘Ground Based Strategic Deterrent’ missiles will soon start replacing the Minuteman III. The US navy is getting new W93 nuclear warheads. The US air force will have B-21 stealth bombers ‘designed to overcome even an advanced adversary’s air defences’. In many respects Obama was a continuity president in matters of imperial management.

In March, the National Intelligence Council delivered its latest ‘global trends’ briefing to President Biden. It included the judgment that the use of nuclear weapons is ‘more likely in this competitive geopolitical environment’. Efforts to find a role for nuclear weapons in conflict have so far fallen at the feet of Luttwak’s maxim. But intentional use is not the only danger. Nuclear strategists systematically underestimate the chances of nuclear accident: it has no place in the logic of strategy. But there have been too many close calls for accidental use to be discounted. The stakes may be anthropogenic extirpation.Lieber and Press argue that nuclear weapons ‘have made the world a better place’ and that abolishing them would lead to more conventional wars. But the assumption that nuclear weapons will indefinitely prevent large wars rests on unjustified optimism. The stronger argument against abolition is practical. Nuclear weapons can be renounced but nuclear capability can’t: our energy needs won’t allow it. And once you have that capability, the silos can always be refilled. When the only rule is the rule of force, agreements between states are always provisional. Solutions to these problems have been proposed. New treaties, such as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which many non-nuclear states have signed, are one approach. A reworking of the IAEA or the placement of fuel cycle facilities into international control are another. But such proposals rarely get far. Instead, the stockpiles are growing.

[beardedmrbean]

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — President Joe Biden’s special envoy for North Korea said Friday the United States is “preparing for all contingencies” in close coordination with its South Korean and Japanese allies as it monitors North Korean arrangements for a possible nuclear test explosion that outside officials say could be imminent.

South Korean and U.S. intelligence officials have said they detected North Korean efforts to prepare its northeastern testing ground for another nuclear test, which would be its seventh since 2006 and the first since September 2017, when it claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear bomb to fit on its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Sung Kim, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, was in Seoul for a trilateral meeting with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts to discuss the growing threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles programs.

“The U.S. assesses that the DPRK is preparing at its Punggye-ri test site for what would be its seventh nuclear test. This assessment is consistent with the DPRK’s own recent public statements,” said Kim, using the initials of North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Aside from coordinating with Seoul and Tokyo over contingency planning, Washington is also prepared to make “both short- and longer-term adjustments to our military posture as appropriate and responding to any DPRK provocation and as necessary to strengthen both defense and deterrence to protect our allies in the region,” Kim said.

Funakoshi Takehiro, Japan’s director-general for Asian and Oceanian Affairs, said the North’s spate of ballistic tests this year and possible nuclear test preparations underscore the need for a more robust international response and lamented the United Nations Security Council's inaction over the North’s recent tests.

Kim Gunn, South Korea's representative at the nuclear envoy, said North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile development would only strengthen the security cooperation between the United States and its Asian allies and deepen the North’s isolation and economic woes.

“That is why it is so important to steer North Korea back towards the paths of dialogue and diplomacy,” he said.

Nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have stalled since 2019 over disagreements in exchanging the release of crippling U.S.-led sanctions against North Korea and the North’s disarmament steps.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has expanded his ballistic missile program amid the diplomatic pause and a nuclear test would escalate his brinkmanship aimed at cementing the North’s status as a nuclear power and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

North Korea has already conducted missile tests 17 different times in 2022, including its first ICBM demonstrations in nearly five years, exploiting a favorable environment to push forward weapons development as the U.N. Security Council remains divided over Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Russia and China last week vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution that would have imposed additional sanctions on North Korea over its latest ballistic tests on May 25, which South Korea's military said involved an ICBM flown on medium-range trajectory and two short-range weapons. Those tests came as Biden wrapped up his trip to South Korea and Japan, where he reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to defend both allies in the face of the North’s nuclear threat.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Washington will still push for additional sanctions if North Korea conducts a new nuclear test.

Kim Jong Un’s pressure campaign is unlikely to be impeded by a deadly coronavirus outbreak in his largely unvaccinated autocracy.

Dr. Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s emergencies chief, said Wednesday that the U.N. health agency assumes the virus situation in North Korea is “getting worse, not better,” considering the lack of public health tools, despite Pyongyang’s recent claims that COVID-19 is slowing there.

While North Korea has so far ignored U.S. and South Korean offers of vaccines and other COVID-19 supplies, the country appears to be receiving help from China, its main ally and economic lifeline.

GAVI, the nonprofit that runs the U.N.-backed COVAX distribution program, said it understands that North Korea has accepted an offer of vaccines from China and has started to administer doses. It isn’t immediately clear how many doses of which vaccines the North received or how the country was rolling them out.

Some experts say North Korea, with its supplies limited, would prioritize inoculating certain groups based on economic needs, including workers and soldiers involved in cross-border trade or major construction projects Kim Jong Un considers crucial to his rule.

The North had previously shunned millions of doses offered by COVAX, possibly because of international monitoring requirements attached to those shots.

“COVAX has allocated doses to DPRK in several prior allocation rounds, and has always been ready to support Pyongyang should it request our assistance, but so far we have received no formal requests for COVID-19 vaccine support,” GAVI said Friday in an email to The Associated Press.

Sung Kim, the U.S envoy, said Washington would continue to support humanitarian efforts to supply the North with COVID-19-related relief.

North Korea says it has so far found 3.9 million people with feverish symptoms, but health officials have confirmed only a handful of cases as COVID-19, likely because of shortages in testing supplies.

[amongussussyimpostors]

Week 6 - Full Metal Jacket Notions

Presenters: Juhani Soininen and Mihkel Piilma

The Iron Curtain is a term used to describe the political boundary between the communist east and the capitalist west. The capitalist west was unofficially led by the United States of America while the communist east was led by the USSR which had its satellite states in Eastern Europe. Below is a map of Europe which shows the capitalist and democratic countries in blue and the communist countries in red. Europe is then divided by a black line which is the Iron Curtain. Gray countries  such as Finland and Sweden were neutral and did not join any alliances with the United States despite having excellent democracies. 

The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy initiated by President Harry S. Truman in 1947 which aimed at containing Soviet geopolitical expansion globally. The policy included the authorization of assissting foreign anti-communist regimes such as Vietnam and Korea. This usually involved indirect involvement such as the sending of special forces and advisors to countries in a struggle against communism and in some cases direct military intervention. The image below displays President Harry S. Truman, the namesake and architect of the Truman Doctrine. 

During the Cold War, the United States had a strategic foreign policy of containment with regards to Soviet expansion worldwide after World War 2. The cause of the policy was the fear of the communist domino effect meaning if one country falls to communism then others will follow its example. The policy came to an end in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The poster below is an American propaganda piece showing a Filipino man protecting the island nation from communism with a sword representing democracy as his weapon. 

The Cold War saw an emergence of an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union for supremacy in nuclear warfare. It first began with the Manhattan Project in which the Americans developed atomic bombs for use against the Axis Powers during the Second World War. After the war, the Soviets took inspiration and began to produce their own weapons of mass destruction. In 1946, the USA tested its nuclear bombs on Biki Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads. In 1952, America tested Ivy Mike in the world’s first full scale test of a thermonuclear device. Throughout the Arms Race, both sides developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs for short. In 1961, the Soviets tested the Tsar Bomba which was the largest and most powerful atomic bomb to ever have been created or tested. The Arms Race concluded in 1987 when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan signed the INF Treaty, resulting in both of the countries’ nuclear disarmament to some extent. The photo below shows President Reagan and Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty. 

The McCarthy Era was a period of American history which lasted from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s when US Senator Joseph McCarthy embarked on a mission to take down communist sympathizers in American society. Joseph McCarthy was a staunch anti-communist and a republican who served in the Second World War as a Marine officer. Throughout his political career, he fueled fears of communist subversion in American society which resulted in a lot of American celebrities being canceled due to them being suspected of holding communist views. The McCarthy Era came to an end in the 1950s when the senator accused the US Army of communism. Below is a picture of Lieutenant Colonel Joseph McCarthy.

The Korean War was fought between 1950 and 1953 between communist North Korea and capitalist South Korea. South Korea was supported by the United Nations, especially the USA while North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union. After the Second World War, Korea, a former colony of Imperial Japan, was divided by the Allies and the USA occupied the South while the North was occupied by the Soviet Union. This led to the clash in ideals which continues to this day. The conflict was inconclusive and resulted in a stalemate which continues to this day. The USA entered the war under President Truman in 1950 but withdrew in 1953 under President Eisenhower. 

The war began in 1950 when North Korea attacked South Korea and was able to capture all of the country except Busan where the South Koreans were able to make a stand. After North Korea refused to follow the UN’s order to withdraw, 16 UN countries sent their militaries to help the south as part of a combined army commanded by General MacArthur who commanded American and Filipino forces during World War 2 in the Pacific against the Japanese Empire. General MacArthur then invaded North Korea until the Chinese joined the war and helped the North Koreans push the UN back to Central Korea where the front stabilized in 1951. 

This map shows the situation of the war following North Korea’s initial attack in 1950. The 38th Parallel is shown and was the original border between the 2 countries. 

John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the USA from 1961 to 1963. John F. Kennedy got the US involved in Cuba which was a part of Kennedy’s way of containing communism. Specifically, JFK authorized the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 in addition to the Cuban Crisis in 1962. President Kennedy also authorized sending special forces and advisors to South Vietnam in their struggle against communism. President Kennedy is also known for starting the Apollo Program which aimed at getting a man on the moon before the Soviets could, which succeeded in 1969. President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 by a sniper. The FBI concluded that there was no conspiracy behind his assassination. Below is a photo of President Kennedy meeting a South Vietnamese representative. 

The Bay of Pigs was a CIA operation in 1961 in which American forces along with Cuban democratic revolutionaries attempted a naval landing on the Cuban Southwestern coast. The American side had 1,500 ground forces and several bombers and it was assumed by the CIA that there would be minimal resistance to an American invasion and that the local population would support them. However, the operation was a failure and Fidel Castro conveniently had thousands of men ready to repel the invasion which it did. In addition, the local population did not support the Americans. The photo below shows Douglas A-4 Skyhawks from the USS Essex during the invasion. 

After the failed invasion, the Soviet Union began helping Castro and Cuba. They began storing nuclear weapons in Cuba as it was a strategically good position, being so close to the United States. Eventually, the USA intercepted a nuclear weapons import from the Soviet Union to Cuba which resulted in a naval quarantine of Cuba. Eventually, the USA and the USSR agreed that the USA would remove its nuclear weapons from Turkey and Italy in addition to promising that they would never invade Cuba without direct provocation. The USSR would in return withdraw its nuclear weapons from Cuba. The Cuban Crisis is regarded as the closest the Cold War came to an escalation to full-scale nuclear war. The photo below shows a US Navy P-2H Neptune flying over a Soviet cargo ship which was used to carry the nuclear weapons to Cuba. 

The Space Race was a competition between the USA and the USSR in the second half of the 20th century with the aim of getting to space. In 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, a satellite. The satellite instilled public fear and the Sputnik Crisis in the USA due to a perceived technological gap between the US and their adversaries. This crisis initiated the space race between the 2 countries. In response, the US launched Explorer 1 satellite in 1958. In 1961, the Soviets made a great step and were able to get the first man in space with Yuri Gagarin. In 1969, the USA was able to land a man on the moon with the Apollo 11 mission, beating the Soviets in the Space Race. The photo below shows the American flag on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission, proving that freedom and democracy have no limits, not even the sky. 

The Vietnam War, much like Korea, was a war in Asia between a democratic capitalist state against a northern communist power supported by the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, the United States got involved in the war in order to protect South Vietnam. The US was once again afraid of the domino effect, and stepped in to prevent other countries from following its example. The US got involved after North Vietnam refused to negotiate with President Johnson. Over 58,000 Americans died during the war, in addition to almost 800,000 South Vietnamese dead. In 1973, the Paris Peace Talks concluded that Vietnam would be divided in 2, the north remaining communist and the south remaining capitalist. However, after President Nixon resigned and the Democrats won the election, they did not see it as necessary to protect South Vietnam. Therefore, the South was invaded and Vietnam was communist. The results were disastrous, almost a million “Vietnamese Boat People” left the country as refugees and around 200,000 of them died at sea. Those South Vietnamese who remained in Vietnam faced oppression, especially those who were supporters of the former democratic regime, who were sent to “re-education” camps where they were tortured and abused. The photo below shows 2 American soldiers in Vietnam. 

Henry Kissinger was a German-born American Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977 and National Security Advisor from 1969 to 1975. Kissinger is notable for having pushed for peace talks in Vietnam and was a key figure in organizing the Paris Peace Talks and the subsequent temporary division of Vietnam. Kissinger also played an important role in Operation Menu, in which the US military bombed Cambodian and Vietnamese targets in Cambodia in order to prevent the North Vietnamese from using the country as a base of operations. The operation resulted in the deaths of thousands of Cambodian civilians, making Kissinger a controversial figure. Below is a photo of Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon. 

Richard Nixon was the 37th President of the USA from 1969 to 1974. During his presidency, he established multiple environmental acts, lowered the voting age to 18 and introduced Comprehensive Health Care which was a progressive policy taken into practice years later. President Nicon did however, hold resentment towards the civil rights activists and supported Chilean dictator Pinochet, who killed millions. In 1973, Nixon engaged in peace talks with the North Vietnamese which brought the war to a ceasefire as they agreed to remain as 2 separate countries. 

In 1972, 5 of Nixon’s men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington with the goal of stealing Democratic Party campaign strategies. The men were caught and arrested, resulting in a major political scandal. The media then went after Richard Nixon. The president is said to have not authorized the break-in, however. Following the break-in, Nixon did not apologize for it and fire those responsible, resulting in the country growing suspicious of his activities. Eventually, Nixon realized that he had lost most of his political support and decided to resign. The Watergate Scandal remains the biggest scandal in American history. The photo shows President Nixon giving his farewell speech to the White House in August 1974. 

Counterculture developed in the United States in the 1960s as a way of life and set of attitudes opposed to or at variance with the prevailing social norm. The late 1960s was a period of time which gave rise to hippie culture which involved listening to rock music, dressing in a very liberal fashion and opposition to war. The counterculture movement was the first time when children disobeyed their parents on a massive scale. The Summer of Love was a social phenomena in 1967 in which up to 100,000 young people gathered in San Francisco to listen to rock music and smoked drugs such as cannabis. Woodstock was a similar music festival held in New York in 1969 in which numerous folk and rock artists performed for up to 400,000 hippies. Woodstock is seen as a pivotal point in the counterculture movement and the beginning of a new era of music. The photo below shows a group of young people near the festival. 

[rauthschild]

France Makes Antarctica Power Grab Then Launches Nuclear Ballistic Missile Towards United States

By: Sorcha Faal

A stunning new Ministry of Defense (MoD) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that at 0137 Moscow Standard Time GMT+3 this morning, the High Command of the Aerospace Forces detected the launch of a multiple-warhead thermonuclear ballistic missile emanating from the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Finistère-France whose trajectory saw it heading for the eastern coastal region of the United States—identified as a M51 submarine-launched “Oceanic Nuclear Warhead” ballistic missile that carries six to ten independently targetable TN-75 miniaturized thermonuclear warheads each having 110-kilotons of explosive power (Little Boy nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima-Japan was 15 kilotons)—was test fired launched by the French Triomphant class nuclear ballistic missile submarine Le Téméraire—was immediately responded to by a US Air Force RC-135R Cobra Ball launch surveillance aircraft that scrambled from its base in Puerto Rico—which itself was quickly met in the air over the Caribbean Sea by a French Navy Falcon 50 Surmar maritime surveillance aircraft—though most critical to note about, all occurred less than 24-hours after France made a sudden power grab by extending its Antarctica maritime space by 151,323 kilometers (94,028 miles) yesterday—an extension vastly expanding the French claim on the continent of Antarctica called Adélie Land—that is part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands—otherwise known in the French language as Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises—or simply TAAF.  [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]

France makes power grab for Antarctica on 11 June 2020…

…then test launches thermonuclear ballistic missile towards United States from French Navy submarine Le Téméraire (above) on 12 June 2020…

…that scrambled from its Puerto Rico base a US Air Force RC-135R Cobra Ball launch surveillance aircraft (ZIGGY 11, above radar track)…

…and was met by a French Navy Falcon 50 maritime surveillance aircraft (FNY5015, above radar track) over the Caribbean Sea.

According to this report, in attempting to discern why France would make a sudden power grab for Antarctica and unmistakably threaten the United States with a nuclear ballistic missile test launch if it interfered in what they are doing, MoD intelligence analysts say the starting point for this series of shocking events occurring must be the famed French astrophysicist Jacques Vallée—who co-developed the first computerized map of Mars for NASA in 1963, and served as the real-life model for Lacombe, the researcher portrayed by François Truffaut in the 1977 film classic about aliens visiting earth titled “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”—but after decades of research, saw Dr. Vallée advancing the “interdimensional hypothesis” that says unidentified flying objects and related events involve visitations from other “realities” or “dimensions” that coexist separately alongside our own.

Over the past month, this report details, the “interdimensional hypothesis” advanced by Dr. Vallée exploded into the consciousness of researchers the world over due to startling findings discovered in Antarctica where scientists “may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time”—findings that discovered “hyperactive particles in Antarctica that officially defy all known rules of physics”—which caused top American scientists to declare: “There’s something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it”—and science writers to explain:

Physicists don’t know what it is exactly.

But they do know it’s some sort of cosmic ray—a high-energy particle that’s blasted its way through space, into the Earth, and back out again.

But the particles physicists know about—the collection of particles that make up what scientists call the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics—shouldn’t be able to do that.

Sure, there are low-energy neutrinos that can pierce through miles upon miles of rock unaffected.

But high-energy neutrinos, as well as other high-energy particles, have “large cross-sections.”

That means that they’ll almost always crash into something soon after zipping into the Earth and never make it out the other side.

Unlike Western scientists who believe that these high-energy neutrinos impossibly blasting out of the Antarctica ground have traveled through the entire Earth, this unclassified portion of this report concludes, Russian scientists have long maintained they aren’t traveling through the Earth at all, but rather they are coming from what’s believed to be a highly-advanced ancient artifact buried beneath Antarctica—an ancient artifact some researchers have linked to what they claim is the world’s oldest pyramid found in Antarctica—and other researchers have linked to what they claim is a massive triangular spacecraft found buried in Antarctica snow and ice—all mysteries of which saw Russian scientists and historians compiling a documentary film about to explain, but for reasons still unknown, saw YouTube blacklisting and removing its English subtitled version a few weeks ago—though one still existing version of it has, at least for now, escaped YouTube censorship—and in censoring, keeps the American people from knowing the truth about the Operation High Jump mission that happened in 1947—a US military mission to Antarctica led by Admiral Richard Byrd, who commanded 4,000 troops along with multiple warships, and planes—were said to have been sent to capture secret Nazi German military bases buried under Antarctica—but whomever they faced saw these US military forces being soundly defeated—though by what and/or by whom has never been fully determined—but by what France is now doing, strongly suggests that may have some answers—the worst of all being them having discovered the parallel universe doorway searched for by the Nazis—that the ancient peoples called “The Gateway To Hell”.        

[freeform-anto-blog]

"The Brinksman's Horizon" (2017) - Digital Collage - Anthony D Kelly

Part of the Reflections On An Age of Anxiety Series. The Brinksman's Horizon is a Digital Collage which stares at the growing threat of Nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula and the wanton use of threatening, provocative language by A Brinksman in Chief at the United Nations Congress this week. In spite of potent economic sanctions the Regime in North Korea have recently made rapid advancements in both the destructive capactity and range of their nuclear weapons. In just the last few months North Korea claim to have successfully detonated a Thermonuclear Device orders of magnitude more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Whilst more recently they have launched a ballistic missile over Japan casting a terrifying light on the traumas of that Nations recent past and setting the world on edge. Communities on the West Coast of America such as Long Beach and Ventura County are now actively planning for the possability of a Nuclear Strike with "Duck and Cover" style public service announcements re-appearing on television. All the while International tensions are flaring into open hostility with President Trump's warning that he may have no choice but to "Totally Destroy North Korea" at the U.N podium. Gimme Shelter!!! Lets just hope more level heads prevail.

For More of Anthony D Kelly's work please don your protective eyewear and and face towards: www.freeformtrouble.com/blog

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[godidymos]

https://presscore.ca/concrete-evidence-shows-us-government-nuked-new-york-city-on-911/?fbclid=IwAR1qYKLfuzHfjQeFU5zJgmVu_wquo_1m8LXKTRCLkZYPj3Psb0So0HhE72Y

Concrete evidence shows US government nuked New York City on 9/11Posted by

Paul W Kincaid

Corruption

,

World news

Monday, May 21st, 2012

What really happened on 9/11?  Foreign terrorists and hijackers didn’t attack the US on September 11, 2001 and bring down the World Trade Center Towers – the U.S. government did that, using controlled impact of unmanned aerial vehicles(UAV) and planted tactical nukes.  The story of the century isn’t about the hijackings of US commercial airlines, it is about the US government using thermal nuclear bombs against another civilian city, for the third and fourth time. This time the 2 nuclear bombings were treasonous – against the US people and on US soil. U. S. President Harry S. Truman authorized the US Military to use two atomic bombs against the Japanese civilian cities of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki August 9, 1945. U.S. President George W Bush authorized the US CIA to detonate two atomic bombs (thermal nuclear devices) in New York City on September, 11, 2001.

It is this disclosure that forced Dick Cheney to go public to distract the public from the irrefutable evidence of nuclear detonations and say he ordered Flight 93 shot down. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC1QAR5gQrc

The US government of George W Bush and Dick Cheney used controlled impacts of US military Boeing aircraft and thermal nuclear devices on US soil, against US civilians, on 9/11. The US government killed thousands on September 11, 2001. They are the ones who attacked the US and the US people. They are the ones who brought down the World Trade Center Towers. bin Laden, Islamic extremists, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. George W Bush and Dick Cheney planned it, ordered it, executed it and killed US civilians, on US soil, on September 11, 2001.

Ground Zero describes the point on the Earth’s surface closest to a nuclear detonation. In the case of an explosion above the ground, ground zero refers to the point on the ground directly below the detonation. On 9/11 the World Trade Center complex became ground zero – the epicentre of a nuclear bomb detonation.

At the bombs hypocenter or ground zero of a thermonuclear explosion a temperature is generated of 500 million degrees Fahrenheit. Everything vaporizes instantly at the center of one of these blasts. Underground nuclear detonations of low depth produces a mushroom cloud and a base surge ( a base surge is a cloud which rolls out from the bottom of the column produced by a subsurface burst of a nuclear weapon.), both seen here in the above photo taken on September 11, 2001.

One the greatest tragedies resulting from the Sept 11, 2001 attack on the WTC towers in New York City is the plight of the heroic rescue workers who saved thousands of lives on that day. A study published in April of 2010 found that about 20% of the 14,000 responders have permanent lung damage. A large number of those 9/11 first responders has contracted blood cancers at an unusually young age, and top doctors suspect the disease was triggered by an unprecedented “synergistic mix” of toxins at the World Trade Center site. These growth of these cancers among Ground Zero workers, and others, are consistent with exposure to radiation contamination.

The WTC Medical Monitoring Program is now studying a group of Ground Zero workers, including cops, construction workers and volunteers, suffering from cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma. The blame has been placed on the ‘toxic dust’ clouds which engulfed the area surrounding the towers. While there is little question that particulate matter such as pulverized concrete impacted the health of those who were standing in the blast radius of the falling towers, the huge number of responders who contracted illnesses including rare cancer types is more akin to those who survived the nuclear bomb detonations in Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan.

How does this comparison make any sense? The 9/11 Commission Report officially stated that the city of New York was hit with planes, not a nuclear missile. As it turns out there is a dirty little secret omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report. The World Trade Center Towers were brought down by explosions containing a large quantity of uranium – from underground nuclear detonations. Experts have always said that the towers were intentionally collapsed by controlled demolitions. Structural engineers from around the World have said that it is impossible to cause a collapse of a skyscraper from a fire caused by an aircraft impact. There have been several major high rise fires throughout the World before 9/11 and since then and none have caused a collapse of the structure. The engineers have even used the Empire State building catastrophe as proof of their claim.

On the foggy morning of Saturday, July 28, 1945, a U.S. Army B-25 bomber smashed into the north side of the Empire State Building. The majority of the plane hit the 79th floor, creating a hole in the building eighteen feet wide and twenty feet high. The plane’s high-octane fuel exploded, hurtling flames down the side of the building and inside through hallways and stairwells all the way down to the 75th floor. The plane exploded within the building. One of the engines and part of the landing gear hurtled across the 79th floor, through wall partitions and two fire walls, and out the south wall’s windows to fall onto a twelve-story building across 33rd Street. The other engine flew into an elevator shaft and landed on an elevator car. Some debris from the crash fell to the streets below, sending pedestrians scurrying for cover, but most fell onto the buildings setbacks at the fifth floor. Still, a bulk of the wreckage remained stuck in the side of the building. After the flames were extinguished and the remains of the victims removed, the rest of the wreckage was removed through the building. The plane crash killed 14 people (11 office workers and the three crewmen) plus injured 26 others. Even though the B-25 bomber had impacted the building at a high rate of speed and the high octane fuel exploded and inflamed 3 floors of the inside of the building the structural integrity of the Empire State Building was not affected.

More recently, on Feb. 12, 2005 in Madrid, the Windsor Tower burned for over 20 hours, which led to a fire stronger and hotter than that in the WTC, but even the collapses of the Windsor Tower caused by the very strong and long-enduring fire were minimal and limited to the upper floors.

These known facts explains a great number of anomalies present in the analysis of how the World Trade Center Towers fell. One of the common questions that has puzzled many independent observers was how jet fuel, which burns in open air at about 300 deg C, was able to compromise the integrity of steel, which melts at 1,000 deg C. The presence of depleted uranium at Ground Zero settles this conundrum.

According to Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City on September 11, 2001, the fires raged at ground zero ‘for a hundred days’ after the towers were hit. The presence of a high-energy compound such as uranium helps explain how this was sustained long after the jet fuel would have been gone and how the health of so many 9/11 first responders was devastated.

On August 29, 1949, the USSR detonated its first nuclear fission bomb, dubbed “Joe-1” by the U.S. It produced the same type of mushroom cloud and a base surge as witnessed by billions of people around the World on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Storax Sedan was a shallow underground nuclear test conducted in Area 10 of Yucca Flat at the Nevada National Security Site on July 6, 1962 as part of Operation Plowshare, a program to investigate the use of nuclear weapons for mining, cratering, and other civilian purposes. The 100 kiloton Sedan nuclear bomb was buried at a depth of 635 feet. The detonation produced a mushroom cloud and base surge – typical of shallow-buried nuclear explosions. The cloud is highly contaminated with radioactive dust particles and produces an intense local fallout.

Experts, both military and civil engineers, have concluded that the only plausible explanation for what happened to the World Trade Center Towers on September 11, 2001 is that small underground nuclear detonations were involved in the collapse of the WTC towers. The over ten million degrees of heat created by a thermonuclear detonation sublimated all water within the concrete of the structure in a moment. Water explodes extremely quickly into 24-fold volume and totally pulverizes the concrete. Burning radiation is absorbed in steel so quickly that steel heats up immediately over its melting point 1585 °C (approx. 2890 °F) and above its boiling point around 3000 C (approx. 5430 °F). Super hot groups of steel pillars and columns, torn from wall by pressure wave, are sublimated. They immediately turn into a vaporized form, binding heat as quickly as possible. Vertical bursts are not possible for a gravitational collapse or for cutting charges which are used horizontally but on the morning of September 11, 2001 we saw exactly that – a nuclear detonation.

Project Plowshare

The following video discusses the Plowshare Program – a program that promoted using the energy produced from nuclear explosions for peaceful uses and applications – Nuclear Excavation

How did they plant the nuclear devices? They drilled a hole in bottom of the elevator shafts of the WTC and lowered the nuclear device into the drilled hole. They used oil rig drilling type equipment to drill the hole to the required depth wherein the nuclear detonation can excavate the WTC and yet produce very little nuclear radiation fallout. Proceed to time stamp 10:00 to see this being done in Operation Plowshare. Time stamp 11:30 shows them lowering the small nuclear device into the drilled hole.

The elevator shafts were intentionally selected to channel the nuclear explosion and intense steel melting heat. The elevator shafts were used like a chimney – to control the detonation and demolition, to create a heat sink using the steel structure of the elevator shaft, to cause the nuclear fission of the steel, to cause an implosion and to vent the intense heat and flash upwards through the center of the building and out of view.

Concrete evidence of nuclear detonations at WTC on 9/11

Many have wondered what caused the steel beams of the World Trade Center Towers to instantly disintegrate? Instantaneous rusting effect of a nuclear detonation explains this. Add the amount of heat generated by a nuclear detonation and you have an instantaneous vaporization of all material (steel beams, concrete, glass, sheet metal, desks, phones, computers, papers and people) within the epicentre of the blast (ground zero). Cast iron melts at approximately 1,375 °C (2,507 °F). It’s boiling point is about 2862 °C (5182 °F). The heat inside a nuclear explosion can reach millions of degrees Fahrenheit – between 50 and 150 million degrees Fahrenheit.

Nuclear detonation instantaneous rust effect at ground zero New York City

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (seen above walking past burned out vehicles) were immediately on scene in a supporting response and recovery role in New York City following the thermal nuclear attacks.

The intense flash heat generated by the nuclear detonations caused vehicles around ground zero to ignite. The WTC fires were all on the floors high above ground yet everywhere around ground zero, vehicles were photographed burned out. The heat was so intense that rubber tires evaporated.

Notice that the fire truck wasn’t hit by debris from the nuclear excavation of the WTC Towers. It was parked beside a building that is still standing. Windows in the building have not been blown out. The front tires are completely gone while the rear tires remain. Dust could not melt the tires. A nuclear detonation heat and shockwave does this type of damage.

[newstfionline]

The North Korean chessboard: What next for the main players?

By Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, Sept. 5, 2017

Over the weekend, North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test, claiming it had detonated a thermonuclear bomb for the first time. The regime in Pyongyang has been signaling for months its intent to unveil such a weapon, and American experts are now coming to grips with what was once an “unthinkable” scenario--that North Korea may pose a credible nuclear threat to the U.S. mainland.

On Monday, that dawning reality led Yukiya Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to describe North Korea as “a global threat.” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said during an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council that the North Korean regime was “begging for war.”

“We have kicked the can down the road long enough,” Haley said as other council members suggested additional sanctions on Pyongyang. “There is no more road left.” But here’s an attempt at gauging where the path ahead may take the actors involved in this geopolitical crisis.

The United States: The Trump administration’s approach, telegraphed for weeks by key figures such as Haley, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, is to exert “maximum pressure” to force North Korea to the negotiating table. But this position has been undercut by President Trump, who fired off a series of bellicose tweets this weekend.

Trump not only raised the prospect of a potentially catastrophic regional trade war but also criticized the new liberal government in South Korea, which hopes for more productive engagement with its northern neighbor. How this helps matters is anyone’s guess.

Trump’s rhetoric is useful in understanding the pronounced split within the White House between those who see the crisis primarily as an opportunity to pressure China, North Korea’s only real ally, and those pursuing a more conventional, if hawkish, strategy to bring North Korea to heel.

Trump, meanwhile, is also reportedly keen on scrapping an existing free-trade deal with South Korea, which may in part explain his harsh words for Seoul.

The confused messaging somewhat obscures the fact that the United States has a narrow set of options when confronting North Korea. For all the posturing over American “fire and fury,” no one is willing to countenance military action that could lead to hundreds of thousands of South Korean deaths within hours of a first strike.

U.S. officials will focus this week on extending the already tight regime of international sanctions further, possibly seeking to cut oil exports to North Korea and curb Pyongyang’s ability to send cheap North Korean laborers to neighboring China and Russia.

China and Russia: It’s unclear whether Moscow and Beijing would go along with such punitive measures at the Security Council, though neither country ruled out new sanctions on Monday. But both the Chinese and Russian ambassadors to the United Nations reiterated that diplomacy and dialogue--not simply sanctions--were essential to calming tensions.

The spotlight is burning bright on China, which has been put in an increasingly awkward position by North Korea. Chinese President Xi Jinping is preparing for a vital party congress in October that will cement his political legacy, and the drama next door is rocking the boat at the worst time.

“China has been cornered,” said Cheng Xiaohe, a North Korea expert at Renmin University in Beijing, to my colleague Emily Rauhala. “I’m afraid of what we are facing now, we are at the stage of a showdown.”

American critics say Beijing could do far more to pressure Pyongyang, including cutting off economic aid. But the Chinese contend that further isolating the North Korean regime would only provoke Kim Jong Un into more destabilizing and unpredictable behavior.

And while the United States and China share the same goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, they are at odds over a range of other issues, including the nature of U.S.-South Korean security ties and ongoing military exercises conducted by the United States and its allies in waters near China.

South Korea and Japan: Of course, no one is more alarmed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests than its U.S.-allied neighbors. For both Japan and South Korea, Pyongyang’s enhanced nuclear threat raises new doubts that the United States can shield their nations from attack.

“If the Americans face a choice between San Francisco and Seoul, they will choose San Francisco,” said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, to the New York Times.

After the nuclear test, both countries sought reassurances from the United States and moved to beef up their own arsenals. South Korea said it would conduct a live-fire drill later this month of missiles that could potentially strike North Korean military and nuclear sites, while its defense minister floated the controversial possibility of redeploying American tactical nuclear weapons on the peninsula--a move that carries real political and security risks.

As for Trump’s jab about South Korean “appeasement,” it didn’t seem to interfere with his 40-minute phone call on Monday with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in which the men pledged to “strengthen joint military capabilities” and “maximize pressure” on Pyongyang. As my colleague Anna Fifield reported, many South Koreans recognize that Trump, while a loose cannon, is still someone they must work with.

“Opinion polls show South Koreans have one of the lowest rates of regard for Trump in the world and they don’t consider him to be a reasonable person,” said David Straub, a former State Department official who dealt with both Koreas, to Fifield. “In fact, they worry he’s kind of nuts, but they still want the alliance.”

North Korea: Then there’s Kim and his regime. North Korea-watchers have puzzled over Pyongyang’s aggressive moves in the past year, which seem to have advanced beyond securing an effective deterrent against potential attack. For North Korea’s brutal leadership, a nuclear arsenal is its main avenue toward global credibility.

“After observing China’s acquisition of nuclear weapons in the 1960s and watching it stare down America’s ‘policy of hostility and imperialism’ by the early 1970s, the Kim regime seems to believe it can pull off the same trick,” noted nonproliferation expert Joshua Pollack.

Whether that’s possible half a century later is another matter.

[thecoroutfitters]

North Korea’s antics and activities have filled the news for months now, having accelerated since Donald Trump was sworn in as president.

While their pursuit of nuclear weapons and missile technology is nothing new, the hermit kingdom of Kin Jong-un seems to be making strides in that direction.

Their latest missile test is a prime example of this. Scheduled on our Independence Day, this missile was a “present” to the United States, according to North Korea’s dictator.

This missile, the Hwasong-14, was the first truly intercontinental missile that the North Korean’s have developed, and its maiden flight went off flawlessly. After the failures of their most recent missile tests, the success of this new model has suddenly made the threat from North Korea much more real.

According to the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Hwasong-14 missile flew over 900 miles, all of it under power. It splashed into the ocean within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, making it a real threat to the Japanese as well, another country that the North Korean government hates almost as much as it hates the United States.

But Japan is a long way from the United States, isn’t it? Yes it is, but the missile didn’t fly its full designed range, probably so that North Korea’s engineers could watch the descent and splashdown as well.

According to experts, the 37 minute flight time of the missile would have given it the ability to reach a maximum altitude of 2,800 km. That would give it a total range of 8,000 km or more, exactly what the government in Pyongyang has stated it would do.

What this means is that the North Koreans finally have a missile that has the potential of reaching the United States. Alaska, Seattle, Washington and Hawaii are all within its range, making Kim Jong-un’s oft-repeated threat of unleashing nuclear hell on the United States a real possibility for the first time.

The fact that this missile, the first of its type, performed so well on its maiden voyage is especially troubling, as it shows how much North Korea’s engineers have been learning from the failures of their recent launches. While those were not of the Hwasong-14, the lessons learned from those less-capable missile launches were obviously applied to the design and manufacture of this new one.

Essentially, this missile is an improvement on the Hwasong-12, with a second stage added. While the first three launches of the Hwasong-12 were failures, the fourth attempt, in May of this year, was a success, with the missile’s apogee 2,111.5 km above the ground and landing 787 km away in the Sea of Japan.

This leads me to think that the Hwasong-14 may actually be able to surpass the 2,800 hm altitude necessary to reach the West Coast of the United States.

What’s Next on the Battlefield?

Does this mean that thermonuclear war is going to come in the next few weeks? Probably not. But it does clearly show us that we are one step closer.

How many of these new missiles they have in production right now is a big question that remains unanswered, as well as whether their nuclear program has reached the point where their bombs are small enough to be installed on top of one of these missiles.

But it is clear that at the rate in which North Korea is improving their missile technology that it won’t be long before they are a true threat to the mainland United States. This new missile, if launched close enough to the United States, could easily carry a nuclear bomb high enough to generate an EMP that would blanket all 48 contiguous states.

Since the missile launches off a mobile launcher, rather than from a silo, this is a very real possibility. It is too large to fit into North Korea’s ballistic missile subs, but it is not too large to be ship-launched.

While too long to fit into a standard shipping container, a special container could be manufactured for it, with the launcher built in. Shipped on a North Korean freighter, this would not be noticeable by the international community.

Such a ship, armed with the Hwasong-14 and a team of technicians, could launch from the middle of the ocean, conducting an effective EMP strike. Being in the middle of the ocean would make detection and interdiction of the responsible ship difficult, but not impossible.

Even so, I am sure that Kim Jong-un would be happy to trade the lives of that crew for the destruction of the United States’ electrical grid.

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In addition, North Korea has as many as six ballistic missile submarines. While they are actually obsolete technology, their existence can’t be ignored. Each of those subs can carry up to two Pukkuksong-1 nuclear missiles.

While the range of that missile is limited to 500 km, the submarine could sneak in close to the shore, launching their missiles to take the heart out of any city within about 300 miles of the coast. Used in conjunction with the Hwasong-14, in a coordinated attack, these could add a considerable amount of punch to the attack.

Recently, I was discussing this with a friend in the military, who dismissed the North Korean’s submarine fleet as obsolete. While I have to agree with him to some extent, there is one glaring statistic which is of supreme importance in any discussion of North Korea’s submarine capabilities. That is, they have a lot of them.

Current estimates put their submarine fleet near 70, which means it would take every submarine the United States Navy owns, including our ballistic submarines to shadow them all.

What this means is that the North Koreans could swarm their submarines to sea and we would not be able to follow them all. Properly executed, there is a chance that their ballistic submarines would escape detection and therefore would not be shadowed. Should that happen, they would have a potent weapon pointed at our country.

Of course, a lot depends on what sort of attack the North Korean military would choose to hurl at the United States. While Kim Jong-un has made it clear that his intent is to attack us with nuclear arms, there are many forms that attack could take. Most specifically, it could be an EMP or a more conventional nuclear attack.

Video first seen on PBS NewsHour .

Our best chances would be if he launched a conventional nuclear attack against us. While that would probably mean the destruction of a number of our most important cities, as a nation we would survive.

But an EMP attack would take out our electrical grid, our communications and just about everything else in the country. Chances are, 90 percent of our population would die.

Currently, we have three aircraft carriers and their battle groups steaming off the Korean Peninsula, ready for anything that North Korea might do. While this constitutes a major naval force, projecting more power than any other nation’s military can project.

But it is of little use against a nuclear threat, except in the case of a disarming first strike. Should the president decide that such a strike was necessary, the combined air power of the three aircraft carriers doesn’t come close to the number of fighters available to North Korea.

Of course, our Navy’s F-16s are more advanced than the North Korean’s fighter jets, even their F-21s, of which they have about 200. Nevertheless, sheer numbers are on the side of the North Koreans, if it is decided that it is necessary to do a preemptive strike against them. Between 458 fighter aircraft and 572 attack aircraft, our 180 Navy aircraft will have a busy time of it.

Then there’s the risk of North Korea attacking our aircraft carriers with their submarine fleet, if we launch a preemptive strike. While our naval fleets always work with submarines in attendance and our nuclear-powered fast-attack boats are technologically far superior to their diesel-electric ones, the sheer numbers of submarines that the North Korean’s have available to them would make things interesting for the submarines working to defend our carrier fleets.

But the real trump card that the North Koreans hold, is the fact that their missiles are mobile. Unlike fixed locations, the missile carriers themselves would have to be located, before any attack could be made. While I’m sure that the NRO is hard at work at this task, hunting for something as small as a missile launcher, in the vastness of any country, even one as small as North Korea, is not easy.

Looking at all this together, it is clear that the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea is a real threat. It is clear that we would win any exchange with the North Koreans. If they chose to use a nuclear-tipped missile against us, our long-standing policy would be to retaliate in kind.

While I would hate to have the responsibility to give that order, someone in the Pentagon has to be thinking about it.

Who’s Paying the Price?

Turning North Korea into a parking lot, in retaliation for destroying our country or even one of our major cities, is not an equitable bargain. We might win the war, but it would be at a terrible price in both military and civilian lives. That’s a price that we as a nation, can’t afford to pay.

So, while chances of a non-military solution are looking thinner and thinner by the day, we need to be praying and hoping for just that. The last Korean war cost approximately 1.9 million total casualties, this next one could cost many times more.

You and I need to be prepared for such an eventuality, regardless of whether it means a conventional nuclear exchange or suffering an EMP attack.

If you live in or near a major city, especially on the West Coast, I would recommend that it’s time to move. Find yourself some greener pastures elsewhere, where you would not be living in the midst of a target. If you can make that move be to a small town, where you wouldn’t have to content with the massive number of people trying to survive after an EMP, so much the better.

Either way, we have apparently just entered another Cold War, and this one seems like we are facing off against an enemy who is much less stable than the old Soviet Union was.

Chances of an actual nuclear attack are clearly much greater than they have ever been. Take the right steps to survival and prepare to face the blackout with your own energy bank! Click the banner for more!

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.

References:

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/north-koreas-submarine-fleet-big-threat-or-big-joke-20300

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[political-affairs]

North Korea paraded Intercontinental ballistic missiles in a show of force

North Korea showcased new intercontinental ballistic missiles during a parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean army. 

North Korea's latest efforts are focused on building reliable long-range missiles, which would have the potential of reaching the mainland United States. On 4 July 2017, Pyongyang said it had carried out its first successful test of an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM). It said the Hwasong-14 could hit "any part of the world", but initial US estimates put the range as shorter than that. The US military described it as an intermediate-range missile, but a number of US experts said they believed the missile could reach the US state of Alaska. On 28 July 2017, North Korea carried out its second and latest ICBM test, with the missile reaching an altitude of about 3,000km and landing in the sea off Japan.

Pyongyang has also displayed two types of ICBMs, known as the KN-08 and KN-14, at military parades since 2012. Carried and launched from the back of a modified truck, the three-stage KN-08 is believed to have a range of about 11,500km. The KN-14 appears to be a two-stage missile, with a possible range of around 10,000km. Neither has yet been tested, and the relationship between them and the Hwasong-14 is not yet clear.

Media reports in the US have claimed that Pyongyang has now made a nuclear warhead small enough to fit inside its missiles. While not confirmed, this has been seen as one of the last obstacles to North Korea being a fully nuclear-armed state. A report in the Washington Post, citing US intelligence officials, suggested North Korea was developing nuclear weapons capable of hitting the US at a much faster rate than expected. A Japanese government defence paper also said the weapons programme had "advanced considerably" and that North Korea possibly now had nuclear weapons.

Inter-continental ballistic missiles are seen as the last word in power projection because they allow a country to wield massive firepower against an opponent on the other side of the planet. During the Cold War, Russia and the United States sought different ways to protect and deliver their missiles, which were hidden in silos, piggybacked on huge trucks or carried by submarines. All ICBMs are designed along similar lines. They are multi-stage rockets powered by solid or liquid fuel, and carry their weapon payload out of the atmosphere into space. The weapon payload - usually a thermonuclear bomb - then re-enters the atmosphere and detonates either above or directly on top of its target. Some ICBMs have a "multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle", or Mirv.

North Korea's own missile programme began with Scuds, with its first batch reportedly coming via Egypt in 1976. By 1984 it was building its own versions called Hwasongs. These missiles have an estimated maximum range of about 1,000km, and carry conventional, chemical and possibly biological warheads.

[ericfruits]

How close is North Korea to having a missile than can hit LA?

THE launch of a ballistic missile on July 28th, with the range to hit cities on America’s west coast, provided further chilling evidence of the speed at which North Korea is developing a capability that Donald Trump has declared it would never have. It followed a test of a similar Hwasong-14 two-stage missile on July 4th. Both launches were on a lofted trajectory—the missile travelling more or less straight up rather than around the curve of the Earth. Based on the test’s course and flight time, analysts believe the first missile would have had a normal-trajectory range of about 7,500km, while the second, which flew for 47 minutes and reached an altitude of 3,700km, would have had a range of up to 10,000km while carrying a warhead weighing up to 650kg.

It is too soon, however, to assert that North Korea is on the brink of being able to threaten, say, Los Angeles, with a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). To do so, it would need to make a warhead compact and light enough to fit into a missile’s nose cone.

Experts, such as Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies in California, believe that North Korea can already fit a fission nuclear warhead with a yield of about 20 kilotonnes, the same as the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, to its short- and medium-range missiles. But so far, there is nothing to suggest that it has yet tested a fusion or thermonuclear weapon despite claims by its leader, Kim Jong Un, that it has. It is clearly working on the technology, though. It may be able to demonstrate this, or at least add a thermonuclear element to boost yield, when it conducts a sixth nuclear test, perhaps before the end of the year. A thermonuclear warhead small enough to be carried by the Hwasong-14 could easily have a yield of 300 kilotonnes, enough to devastate an area of over 70 square kilometres.

There is also scepticism that North Korea has yet produced a re-entry vehicle that would protect the warhead on its path through the Earth’s atmosphere at velocities travelled by ICBMs. In an analysis of the latest launch, Michael Elleman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies has examined video from a weather camera in Hokkaido, Japan, which captured the glowing re-entry vehicle on film as it sped earthwards. As it hits the Earth’s atmosphere, it starts to shed “small radiant objects” and “incandescent vapour”. It then dims and disappears.

Based on its current progress, North Korea will probably overcome such problems sooner rather than later. The latest assessment by America’s Defence Intelligence Agency, reported by the Washington Post three days before the most recent missile test, is that North Korea could have a workable ICBM some time in 2018—at least two years before the previous consensus had estimated it would do so.

The reactions to the missile test were mostly predictable. Two B1 strategic bombers were dispatched from an American base in Guam to fly over South Korea. A THAAD anti-missile battery in Alaska, like the one recently deployed in South Korea, successfully carried out a test interception. In two tweets Mr Trump wrote: “I am very disappointed in China. Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet…they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue. China could easily solve this problem!”

A few days later Rex Tillerson, America’s secretary of state, struck a more emolient note towards North Korea, saying: “We do not seek a regime change…we hope that at some point they will begin to understand that and we would like to sit and have a dialogue with them.”

Paradoxically, in South Korea, conservative opposition parties have called on the country’s recently elected liberal president, Moon Jae-in, to abandon his twin-track policy of imposing sanctions on North Korea while still offering dialogue. Mr Moon wants to see a greater level of military readiness for anything that might happen. But, like Mr Tillerson, he is still insisting that he would not close the door on talks with Mr Kim, should he respond. Among the options under consideration is a relaxation of an agreement between America and South Korea that limits the range and payload of the South’s conventional missiles.

If the reaction to the test on July 28th consisted largely of gestures and vague threats, that is because the options are either improbable (constructive talks with Mr Kim), feeble (tougher sanctions) or terrifying (pre-emptive military action).

For all that, fears are growing that Mr Kim and Mr Trump are now on a collision course which could result in a war that neither wants, but which both may find difficult to avoid. Rodger Baker of Stratfor, a geopolitical consulting firm, says that Mr Kim wants to prove he has a credible ICBM capability, while America has to show that it has the military will to prevent it. He believes that North Korea would have to respond in some way to an American strike, even of the most limited kind.

Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, warns that America’s ability to deal with all North Korea’s nuclear facilities “is very uncertain”. He adds that anticipating what the North might do with its conventional weapons is like “trying to describe a very complex game of multidimensional chess in terms tic-tac-toe”. The problem, he says, is that there are many ways and reasons for each side to escalate the fighting once it begins. Stopping it would be much more difficult.

People with military experience of Korea “paint a picture that should scare the hell out of anyone in the US who was contemplating an attack,” says Jonathan Pollack of the Brookings Institution. “Are we over-estimating North Korea?” he asks. “I don’t want to find out.”

This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Testing, testing…"

http://ift.tt/2vm6NvN

[courtneytincher]

How the B-2 Bomber Would Strike Iran, North Korea or China in a War

Northrop had been working on stealth since at least the mid-1960s. The B-2 Spirit is one of three strategic heavy bombers in U.S. Air Force service. Originally conceived to infiltrate the Soviet air-defense network and attack targets with nuclear weapons, over the decades its mission has grown to include conventional precision attack. The B-2 is the most advanced bomber in U.S. service, and the only one of three types that still carries nuclear gravity bombs.(This first appeared in 2017.)In the late 1970s, the administration of President Jimmy Carter opposed the high-speed B-1A bomber as a waste of government money. Carter had been briefed on the new field of stealth technology and was responsible for the development of the F-117A stealth fighter. Instead of the B-1A, Carter authorized development of the Advanced Technology Bomber, or Stealth Bomber. Little was known about the bomber at the time except that it would incorporate new radar-evading technologies and possibly a dramatically different shape than previous bombers.What a War Between China and Japan Would Look Like. The U.S. Air Force sent out a Request for Proposal in 1980, and in October 1981 Northrop won a $7.3 billion initial contract to produce 127 Advanced Technology Bombers. Northrop was a curious pick—after all, it had not produced any bombers since World War II.Northrop had been working on stealth since at least the mid-1960s. At a research facility in Rancho Palos Verdes, California Northrop had been working on radar-evading aircraft shapes and radar-resistant materials. The company lost the competition to build the Experimental Survivable Test Bed (XST), what would later become the stealth fighter to Lockheed, but did win the opportunity to build another stealth test bed, Tacit Blue. Tacit Blue featured 360 degree stealth, a must-have for a penetrating strategic bomber.What a War Between America and China Would Look Like. Engineers had long known that flying wings had a minimal radar signature, and flying wings were a Northrop specialty. The company had produced four flying wings: the Northrop N-9M, the XB-35 and YB-49, and the YB-49A. None had been picked up by the Air Force, but it gave Northrop a great deal of experience with the aircraft form. A flying wing properly shaped to further confound radar and use of advanced composite materials would create the ultimate penetration bomber, undetectable by radar.What a War Between NATO and Russia Would Look Like. The B-2 was developed as a black program, with all of the pluses and minuses that entails. On the plus side, it was developed with a high level of secrecy, and until rollout in 1988 few were sure exactly what the B-2 looked like. On the other hand costs—and development problems that caused them to rise—were kept secret until 1988. The cost of the overall B-2 program rose from 35.7 to 42.8 billion dollars. Approximately one billion was spent strengthening the wing, an Air Force requirement, should the bomber ever be required to fly at low altitude. There were also allegations of fraud and overcharging, at least one of which was settled out of court. The poisoned relationship between the Air Force and Northrop is regarded by some as one reason why the Advanced Technology Fighter competition, which produced the F-22A Raptor fighter, went to competitor Lockheed Martin and not Northrop.On November 22, 1988 the first B-2 was rolled out at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, and given the name “Spirit.” The bomber looked like a boomerang, with a serrated rear section. Like previous Northrop designs it lacked a tail, seamlessly blended wing and body, and buried its four General Electric F118-GE-100 non-afterburning turbofans deep within the aircraft fuselage. Spectators were kept 200 feet from the aircraft to prevent close inspection of the plane’s features.At the time of rollout, the B-2’s unit cost was estimated at $515 million each, making it the most expensive plane ever made. The value of stealth had not been proven in battle, and Congress began to fret about the cost of the projected 132 aircraft. On top of cost and effectiveness issues Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika reforms had considerably lowered tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, reducing the likelihood of nuclear conflict. The number of aircraft was eventually trimmed to just twenty-one.The B-2 is sixty-nine feet long and seventeen feet high. It has wingspan of 172 feet—exactly the same as that of the XB-35 and YB-49. It has a speed of 680 miles an hour, and had a maximum altitude of 50,00 feet. It has an unrefueled range of 6,000 miles, and has midair refueling capability.The new bomber was one of the first military aircraft to make widespread use of new composite materials. Nearly 80 percent of the aircraft is made from woven composites that incorporated glass, carbon, and graphite fibers, while the remainder is made of aluminum and titanium. The Spirit also has a radar absorbent coating whose sole purpose is to further reduce the radar signature. Former Air Force Chief of Staff Larry Welch has stated that the B-2 has a radar cross section in the “insect category.”The B-2 has two weapons bays built into the belly section that together can hold up to 60,000 pounds of ordnance. Each bay carries eight bomb racks, and in the nuclear role the bomber can carry an assortment of up to sixteen B61-7 bombs (10–360 kilotons), B61-11 bombs (400 kilotons) or B-83-1 thermonuclear bombs (1.2 megatons). The Spirit will also carry the new B-61-12 bomb with a “dial-a-yield” configuration, giving it a yield of .3, 1.5, 10 or 50 kilotons. The B-2 does not carry any nuclear-armed missiles at this time but will carry the Long Range Standoff nuclear cruise missile when it enters service.The need to penetrate advanced air-defense networks in the post–Cold War era led to B-2s acquiring a conventional strike capability. The bomber can carry up to sixteen Joint Directed Attack Munition (JDAM) satellite-guided 2,000 pound bombs. In the past it has also carried CBU-87 Combined Effects Munitions and CBU-90 Gator mine dispensers, but submunition-dispensing munitions are being phased out in U.S. inventories. The bomber also carries the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, a glide bomb with a range of up to fifty miles and a GPS-based guidance system. For standoff attacks, the Spirit can carry the AGM-158 Joint Air Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and the new, longer-range JASSM-ER (extended range). Finally, the B-2 can carry two 30,000 pound twenty foot long Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs for attacking hardened targets, one per weapons bay.The B-2 has seen extensive use in the conventional role. The Spirit first dropped bombs in anger in the 1999 Kosovo War, followed by the Iraq War in 2003. B-2s were among the first to drop bombs on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan after 9/11, and bombed Libyan forces in 2011. The bombers are restricted to flying from a handful of locations, due to their need for special climate controlled accommodations to protect their radar-absorbent coatings. Flight time from the home of the Spirit fleet, Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, to Iraq is thirty-eight hours and includes 4–5 aerial refuelings. Small numbers of B-2s can also operate from Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam in the Pacific and RAF Fairford in the UK.B-2 bombers would almost certainly take part in any attack on North Korea’s nuclear program, which would almost certainly be a part of or escalate to a larger war between Pyongyang, its neighbors and the United States. While the B-1B bomber can launch cruise missile strikes against exposed targets, the B-2 would be sent after the North Korean leadership itself. The Spirit would drop Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on hardened and underground North Korean command and control system, ideally disrupting its ability to issue orders to launch missiles. Spirits would also drop MOPs on any hardened leadership facilities suspected of hiding North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and any concrete-protected nuclear storage and missile launch facilities.Conventional or nuclear, the B-2 Spirit can handle almost any precision attack mission in any environment imaginable, located at practically any point on Earth. The new B-21 Raider bomber, set to enter service in the mid-2020s, appears very similar to the B-2. Meanwhile, the current B-2 fleet will likely fly for another twenty years or more. All of this adds up to the Air Force flying bat-winged, stealthy bombers for another forty or even fifty years, a testament to the original flying wing stealth design that dates all the way back to World War II.Kyle Mizokami is a writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and The Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.Image: Wikimedia

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Northrop had been working on stealth since at least the mid-1960s. The B-2 Spirit is one of three strategic heavy bombers in U.S. Air Force service. Originally conceived to infiltrate the Soviet air-defense network and attack targets with nuclear weapons, over the decades its mission has grown to include conventional precision attack. The B-2 is the most advanced bomber in U.S. service, and the only one of three types that still carries nuclear gravity bombs.(This first appeared in 2017.)In the late 1970s, the administration of President Jimmy Carter opposed the high-speed B-1A bomber as a waste of government money. Carter had been briefed on the new field of stealth technology and was responsible for the development of the F-117A stealth fighter. Instead of the B-1A, Carter authorized development of the Advanced Technology Bomber, or Stealth Bomber. Little was known about the bomber at the time except that it would incorporate new radar-evading technologies and possibly a dramatically different shape than previous bombers.What a War Between China and Japan Would Look Like. The U.S. Air Force sent out a Request for Proposal in 1980, and in October 1981 Northrop won a $7.3 billion initial contract to produce 127 Advanced Technology Bombers. Northrop was a curious pick—after all, it had not produced any bombers since World War II.Northrop had been working on stealth since at least the mid-1960s. At a research facility in Rancho Palos Verdes, California Northrop had been working on radar-evading aircraft shapes and radar-resistant materials. The company lost the competition to build the Experimental Survivable Test Bed (XST), what would later become the stealth fighter to Lockheed, but did win the opportunity to build another stealth test bed, Tacit Blue. Tacit Blue featured 360 degree stealth, a must-have for a penetrating strategic bomber.What a War Between America and China Would Look Like. Engineers had long known that flying wings had a minimal radar signature, and flying wings were a Northrop specialty. The company had produced four flying wings: the Northrop N-9M, the XB-35 and YB-49, and the YB-49A. None had been picked up by the Air Force, but it gave Northrop a great deal of experience with the aircraft form. A flying wing properly shaped to further confound radar and use of advanced composite materials would create the ultimate penetration bomber, undetectable by radar.What a War Between NATO and Russia Would Look Like. The B-2 was developed as a black program, with all of the pluses and minuses that entails. On the plus side, it was developed with a high level of secrecy, and until rollout in 1988 few were sure exactly what the B-2 looked like. On the other hand costs—and development problems that caused them to rise—were kept secret until 1988. The cost of the overall B-2 program rose from 35.7 to 42.8 billion dollars. Approximately one billion was spent strengthening the wing, an Air Force requirement, should the bomber ever be required to fly at low altitude. There were also allegations of fraud and overcharging, at least one of which was settled out of court. The poisoned relationship between the Air Force and Northrop is regarded by some as one reason why the Advanced Technology Fighter competition, which produced the F-22A Raptor fighter, went to competitor Lockheed Martin and not Northrop.On November 22, 1988 the first B-2 was rolled out at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, and given the name “Spirit.” The bomber looked like a boomerang, with a serrated rear section. Like previous Northrop designs it lacked a tail, seamlessly blended wing and body, and buried its four General Electric F118-GE-100 non-afterburning turbofans deep within the aircraft fuselage. Spectators were kept 200 feet from the aircraft to prevent close inspection of the plane’s features.At the time of rollout, the B-2’s unit cost was estimated at $515 million each, making it the most expensive plane ever made. The value of stealth had not been proven in battle, and Congress began to fret about the cost of the projected 132 aircraft. On top of cost and effectiveness issues Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika reforms had considerably lowered tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, reducing the likelihood of nuclear conflict. The number of aircraft was eventually trimmed to just twenty-one.The B-2 is sixty-nine feet long and seventeen feet high. It has wingspan of 172 feet—exactly the same as that of the XB-35 and YB-49. It has a speed of 680 miles an hour, and had a maximum altitude of 50,00 feet. It has an unrefueled range of 6,000 miles, and has midair refueling capability.The new bomber was one of the first military aircraft to make widespread use of new composite materials. Nearly 80 percent of the aircraft is made from woven composites that incorporated glass, carbon, and graphite fibers, while the remainder is made of aluminum and titanium. The Spirit also has a radar absorbent coating whose sole purpose is to further reduce the radar signature. Former Air Force Chief of Staff Larry Welch has stated that the B-2 has a radar cross section in the “insect category.”The B-2 has two weapons bays built into the belly section that together can hold up to 60,000 pounds of ordnance. Each bay carries eight bomb racks, and in the nuclear role the bomber can carry an assortment of up to sixteen B61-7 bombs (10–360 kilotons), B61-11 bombs (400 kilotons) or B-83-1 thermonuclear bombs (1.2 megatons). The Spirit will also carry the new B-61-12 bomb with a “dial-a-yield” configuration, giving it a yield of .3, 1.5, 10 or 50 kilotons. The B-2 does not carry any nuclear-armed missiles at this time but will carry the Long Range Standoff nuclear cruise missile when it enters service.The need to penetrate advanced air-defense networks in the post–Cold War era led to B-2s acquiring a conventional strike capability. The bomber can carry up to sixteen Joint Directed Attack Munition (JDAM) satellite-guided 2,000 pound bombs. In the past it has also carried CBU-87 Combined Effects Munitions and CBU-90 Gator mine dispensers, but submunition-dispensing munitions are being phased out in U.S. inventories. The bomber also carries the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, a glide bomb with a range of up to fifty miles and a GPS-based guidance system. For standoff attacks, the Spirit can carry the AGM-158 Joint Air Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and the new, longer-range JASSM-ER (extended range). Finally, the B-2 can carry two 30,000 pound twenty foot long Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs for attacking hardened targets, one per weapons bay.The B-2 has seen extensive use in the conventional role. The Spirit first dropped bombs in anger in the 1999 Kosovo War, followed by the Iraq War in 2003. B-2s were among the first to drop bombs on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan after 9/11, and bombed Libyan forces in 2011. The bombers are restricted to flying from a handful of locations, due to their need for special climate controlled accommodations to protect their radar-absorbent coatings. Flight time from the home of the Spirit fleet, Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, to Iraq is thirty-eight hours and includes 4–5 aerial refuelings. Small numbers of B-2s can also operate from Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam in the Pacific and RAF Fairford in the UK.B-2 bombers would almost certainly take part in any attack on North Korea’s nuclear program, which would almost certainly be a part of or escalate to a larger war between Pyongyang, its neighbors and the United States. While the B-1B bomber can launch cruise missile strikes against exposed targets, the B-2 would be sent after the North Korean leadership itself. The Spirit would drop Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on hardened and underground North Korean command and control system, ideally disrupting its ability to issue orders to launch missiles. Spirits would also drop MOPs on any hardened leadership facilities suspected of hiding North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and any concrete-protected nuclear storage and missile launch facilities.Conventional or nuclear, the B-2 Spirit can handle almost any precision attack mission in any environment imaginable, located at practically any point on Earth. The new B-21 Raider bomber, set to enter service in the mid-2020s, appears very similar to the B-2. Meanwhile, the current B-2 fleet will likely fly for another twenty years or more. All of this adds up to the Air Force flying bat-winged, stealthy bombers for another forty or even fifty years, a testament to the original flying wing stealth design that dates all the way back to World War II.Kyle Mizokami is a writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and The Daily Beast. In 2009 he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.Image: Wikimedia

August 23, 2019 at 07:00AM via IFTTT

[investmart007]

SEOUL, South Korea  | Kim Jong Un could give up ICBMs but keep some nuclear forces

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/eggMn8

SEOUL, South Korea  | Kim Jong Un could give up ICBMs but keep some nuclear forces

SEOUL, South Korea  — After years of effort to develop nuclear missiles that can target the U.S. mainland, is North Korean leader Kim Jong Un really ready to pack them away in a deal with President Donald Trump?

Perhaps, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean Pyongyang is abandoning its nuclear ambitions entirely.

Tuesday’s meeting in Singapore between Kim and Trump comes after a sharp turn in North Korea’s diplomacy, from rebuffing proposals for dialogue last year to embracing and even initiating them this year. The change may reflect a new thinking about its nuclear deterrence strategy — and how best to secure the ultimate goal of protecting Kim’s rule.

A look at how Kim’s appetite for talks swung amid the North’s ups and downs in weapons development and what that says about how he might approach his negotiations with Trump:

___

TESTS AND TALKS

North Korea’s attitude toward dialogue in the past two years has seemed to shift with setbacks or progress in its weapons tests.

Even after starting a rapid process of weapons development following a nuclear test in January 2016, Pyongyang constantly invited rivals to talks that year.

It proposed military meetings with Seoul to reduce tensions and indicated it could suspend its nuclear and missile tests if the U.S.-South Korean military drills were dialed back. Washington and Seoul demurred, saying Pyongyang first must show genuine intent to denuclearize.

At the time, North Korea’s quest for a credible nuclear deterrent against the U.S. was troubled. The military conducted eight tests of its “Musudan” intermediate-range missile in 2016, but only one of those launches was seen as successful. The country’s path toward an intercontinental-range ballistic missile appeared cut off.

North Korea’s stance on dialogue changed dramatically, though, following the successful test of a new rocket engine in March 2017, which the country hailed as a significant breakthrough.

The engine, believed to be a variant of the Russian-designed RD-250, powered a successful May flight of a new intermediate-range missile, the Hwasong-12, reopening the path to an ICBM. That was followed in July by two successful tests of an ICBM, the Hwasong-14.

Pyongyang’s demands for talks disappeared. Proposals to meet from a new liberal government in Seoul were ignored. Determined to test its weapons in operational conditions, the North flew two Hwasong-12s over Japan and threatened to fire them toward Guam, a U.S. military hub.

The North’s state media brought up President Richard Nixon’s outreach to Beijing in the 1970s following a Chinese test of a thermonuclear bomb, saying it was likewise inevitable that Washington will accept North Korea as a nuclear power and take steps to normalize ties.

Kim talked of reaching a military “equilibrium” with the U.S. By all signs, he was fully committed to completing an ICBM program he intended to keep.

___

THE DETERRENCE GAME

Kim’s turn toward diplomacy this year suggests he may have concluded the nuclear deterrence strategy was failing, some analysts say.

After a November test of a larger ICBM, the Hwasong-15, Kim proclaimed his nuclear force as complete, but his announcement may have been more politically motivated than an assessment of capability.

Although the Hwasong-15 displayed a greater range than the Hwasong-14, there was no clear sign the North had made meaningful progress in the technology needed to ensure that a warhead would survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric re-entry.

New U.S. National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy reports released in December and January respectively also seemed to reduce the credibility of Kim’s deterrence plans, said Hwang Ildo, a professor at Seoul’s Korea National Diplomatic Academy.

In the documents, the U.S. assesses it could sufficiently defend against the small number of North Korean ICBMs — believed to be about 10 or fewer — with its 44 ground-based interceptors deployed in Alaska. Missiles fired from North Korea would have to pass Alaska to reach the U.S. mainland.

Experts are divided on whether the interceptors, which Washington plans to deploy in larger numbers soon, can be counted on to destroy incoming warheads. However, Hwang said, real capability doesn’t matter as much as Trump believing that the system works, which reduces the bargaining power of the ICBMs.

Kim can’t be the Mao Zedong to Trump’s Nixon if the U.S. sees his weapons as containable. With North Korea’s limited resources, as well as the threat of a pre-emptive U.S. attack, it’s difficult for the North to mass produce enough ICBMs to overwhelm the interceptors in Alaska.

Rather than prolonging his nation’s economic suffering, Kim may have concluded it would be better to deal away his ICBMs at the cusp of operational capability, especially when it was no longer clear the missiles would guarantee his survival.

“North Korea always tries to maintain flexibility and increase its options from step to step,” Hwang said.

___

A PAKISTANI MODEL?

What never changes for North Korea is that the survival of the Kim regime comes first.

Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Korea University, said Kim is probably modeling a nuclear future after Pakistan, which began building a nuclear arsenal in the 1990s to deter India. Pakistan is now estimated to have more than 100 warheads that are deliverable by short- and medium-range weapons and aircraft.

Kim may be seeking a deal where he gives up his ICBMs but keeps his shorter-range arsenal, which may satisfy Trump but drive a wedge between Washington and its Asian allies, Seoul and Tokyo. In drills with shorter-range weapons in 2016, the North demonstrated the potential to carry out nuclear attacks on South Korean ports and U.S. military facilities in Japan.

In negotiations, Kim may try to exclude submarine technologies from a freeze or verification process to leave open a path toward sub-launched ballistic missile systems, Hwang said.

Then, if diplomacy fails and Kim goes back to building nuclear weapons, the systems would expand their reach and provide a second-strike capability to retaliate if North Korea’s land-based launch sites are destroyed.

North Korea successfully tested a submarine-launched missile that flew about 500 kilometers (310 miles) in August 2016. Analysts believe the solid-fuel missile can hit targets as far as 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) away.

That said, it would take years for the North to develop a fleet of submarines that can quietly travel deep into the Pacific.

The immediate outcome of the summit in Singapore is likely to be a vague aspirational statement on the North’s denuclearization, Nam said. When it comes to details, Washington and Pyongyang are destined to “muddle through” a lengthy process, wrestling over the terms of monitoring and inspections, he said.

Still, such a process would halt the growth of the North’s nuclear program and prevent it from using its weapons to flex its diplomatic muscle, Nam said. It could take a decade or so for Kim to find his next move in nuclear deterrence if he’s eyeing a submarine-launched system. That could be enough time for Washington, Seoul and others to convince Kim he just can’t win the nuclear game.

__

By Associated Press

___

[opedguy]

Trump Close to Peace Deal with North Korea

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), April 19, 2018.--When the White House announced yesterday that CIA Director Mike Pompeo had met over Easter with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, the prospects for nuclear disarmament got a lot better.  Kim told Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing March 27 that he was ready to relinquish his arsenal of nukes and ballistic missiles as long a China guaranteed his security of North Korea. Xi told Kim that North Korea’s security was contingent on him disbanding his nukes and ballistic missiles.  Kim insisted before meeting with Xi that his nukes and long-range ballistic missiles were aimed to prevent a U.S. invasion.  Xi pointed out to Kim that there’s been no U.S. invasion since the Korean War ended July 27, 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty. Kim recently told South Korean President Moon Jae-in that he was committed to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula without preconditions.

            When Moon and Kim meet in the Demilitarized Zone [Zone] the details have already been worked out concerning North Korea’s nuclear weapons.  “I don’t think denuclearization has different meanings for South and North Korea.  The North is expressing a will for a complete denuclearization,” Moon said at a meeting with the Korean Media companies.  Once thought unthinkable and off-the-table, today’ discussion with Kim could not be more upfront in terms of discussion nuclear disarmament.  Pompeo’s meeting with Kim confirms what South Korean officials have been saying all along, that North Korea’s ready to disarm.  Trump’s tough talk and global coalition have helped bring Kim to the bargaining table.  Unlike when former President Bill Clinton tried to negotiate with the late Kim Jong-Il in 1993, Kim seems ready to play ball with Trump.

            While the media plays up the Stormy Daniels scandal, preparations are underway not only to dismantle North Korea’s nuke and ballistic missile programs but to complete a peace treaty, not accomplished at the July 27, 1953 end of the Korean War.  “They have not attached any preconditions that the U.S. cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea.  All they [North Korea] are talking about is the end of hostile policies against North Korea, followed by a guarantee of security,” said Moon.  U.S. officials worried that Kim would “bait-and-switch” heading into a summit. Moon assured White House officials that Kim was serious about dismantling his nuke and ballistic missile program in exchange for security and eventual economic assistance.  Pompeo’s direct talks with Kim confirms his willingness disarm his nukes and ballistics, something once thought unthinkable.

            Trump’s get-tough approach with North Korean forced the international community to heap maximum pressure on Kim to dismantle his nukes and ballistic missiles.  Less than a year ago Sept. 2, 2017, Kim detonated what experts believe was a thermonuclear device or hydrogen bomb.  Kim followed that up Sept. 15, 2017 shooting an ICBM over Japan, signaling to nuclear experts he was rapidly closing the gap on an operational nuclear-tipped ICBM.  Trump put his foot down after Kim’s last ICBM flown over Japan Nov. 28, 2017, warning the reclusive dictator that he would exercise the military option if Kim did not disarm.  Most U.S. press reports blamed Trump for provoking the 33-year-old North Korean dictator.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel was so rattled by the prospects of war on the Korean Peninsula, she offered Sept. 10, 2017 to mediate the U.S.-North Korean crisis.

            With Pompeo a key player negotiating nuclear disarmament with North Korea, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee finds itself under pressure to approve his nomination for Secretary of State. Trump only needs Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to change his vote to approve Pompeo with the requisite numbers of votes. Trump confirmed yesterday he intends to meet with Kim sometime in late May or early June to nail down a disarmament and peace deal.  Kim likes the idea of a peace deal because it wins North Korea the kind of economic backing needed to begin dealing with mass starvation and a stagnant economy. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort, agreed that maximum pressure had to be applied to North Korea before he signs a disarmament agreement and peace treaty.  Getting a peace treaty would be an added bonus to the upcoming summit meeting with Moon.

            Moon said if Kim follows up with his promise to allow U.N. Weapons Inspectors to dismantle his nuke and ballistic missile program, Japan would do its part with economic aid.  “So first, the South-North Korean summit must make a good beginning and the dialogue between the two Koreas like must continue after we see the results of the North Korea-United States summit,” Moon said.  Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee must be on the same page to back Pompeo, because he’s got a good first start on a disarmament breakthrough with Kim.  China’s Foreign Minister Hua Chaunying said Beijing backs peace on the Korean Peninsula. “China supports ending the war state on the Peninsula a an early day,” saying its willing to play an active role in peace efforts on the Peninsula.  If Trump pulls off disarmament and a peace deal, the Russian collusion probe will seem irrelevant.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[newstfionline]

With submarine program, N. Korea signals surge toward full nuclear deterrence

Peter Grier, CS Monitor, December 27, 2017

This year North Korea says it has tested its first hydrogen bomb and an intercontinental ballistic missile with the range to reach the entire continental United States. What’s next for Pyongyang’s nuclear program? Perhaps construction of its first operational ballistic missile submarine.

Movement of parts and equipment at a key North Korean shipyard indicate workers are assembling a new missile sub on an “accelerated schedule,” according to 38 North, an analysis site run by the US-Korea Institute of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Clues revealed by surveillance photos include large hull sections near construction halls and a test stand likely used for missile-ejection tests.

Even if it becomes successfully armed with nuclear weapons, one missile sub by itself might not be worrisome, from the US point of view. It would add a complication for defense planning more than an entirely new strategic threat. The sub itself almost certainly will be too noisy to get from the Korean coastline undetected.

It’s the direction of the sub program, and what it represents, that’s perhaps the problem. The diversity of North Korea’s nuclear-capable weapons is expanding at a rate that’s surprised US experts. Pyongyang may be moving quickly toward full-spectrum nuclear deterrence, a multi-prong plan intended to protect the existing regime against conventional as well as nuclear attack.

It’s part of a doctrine called “asymmetric escalation,” says one expert, who judges that North Korea has already constructed a strategic force capable of plausibly carrying it out.

“I think we have to assume from a policy perspective that they plausibly do--certainly enough that I wouldn’t risk New York or DC to find out,” says Vipin Narang, a proliferation expert and associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an email response to a reporter’s inquiry.

Yes, doubts remain about how big the gaps are in the regime’s present capabilities, such as whether its warheads can withstand the forces of reentering Earth’s atmosphere in a long-range attack. But 2017 was the year North Korea’s nuclear capabilities emerged as a real strategic problem for the United States and its allies.

Before January it seemed more a notional or emerging program. Missile tests sometimes went awry, perhaps due to secret US cyber-interference with North Korean systems. North Korean nuclear tests were scary, but in the scale of things atomic, relatively small.

That changed on Sept. 3, when Pyongyang tested a nuclear device whose estimated yield was at least 140 kilotons. Previous North Korean tests had not surpassed about 20 kilotons. Many US experts believe an explosion that size shows North Korea has indeed acquired the expertise to build a true hydrogen bomb.

Then on Nov. 28, North Korea test launched a big new missile, the Hwasong-15. Launched relatively vertically, this ICBM went about 600 miles high. If fired on a lower trajectory, its range would be about 8,100 miles, according to US calculations. That means it could reach the big cities of the continental US, including those on the East Coast.

Overall North Korea had about 20 test ballistic-missile launches in 2017, a tick fewer than the 24 of 2016. The impressive--or concerning--aspect of this program was that it demonstrated a number of new short- and medium-range missile types, alongside the long-range Hwasong-15. Pyongyang appears to be moving up a step on the ladder of technology, away from missiles based on old Soviet-era Scud technology to more advanced and reliable designs.

Enter the submarine-launched ballistic missile, or SLBM. North Korea already has an experimental Sinpo-class diesel electric sub that “may” be able to launch ballistic missiles, according to a Congressional Research Service report on North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. CRS says this sub might have been used in testing of a nascent North Korean SLBM, a two-stage, solid-fuel rocket dubbed the KN-11.

Now North Korean engineers are apparently working on a more operational version of this system. In late November 38 North reported that commercial satellite imagery had revealed new activity at the Sinpo South Shipyard, which specializes in submarine construction. Gantry cranes and towers had begun moving around. Photos showed several apparent sub pressure hull sections of about 7 meters in diameter lying on a ramp near an assembly building. A service tower in place suggested imminent missile-ejection tests.

In 2018 we’re likely to see North Korean tests related to SLBM development, says Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate in the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Missile engine tests done horizontally with solid fuel leave a characteristic burn mark, says Ms. Hanham. Ejection tests at Sinpo involve pitching the missiles into piles of soft dirt, also leaving characteristic and detectable impressions.

North Korea is also putting into service a second submersible ballistic-missile test stand barge at another shipyard, Hanham notes.

Why push forward to perfect SLBMs? Prestige might be one answer. But sub-launched missiles would also give North Korea more options. In a confrontation they would be one more thing for South Korea, Japan, and the US to track, though it is likely the sub would not travel too far from the Korean coastline.

However, it might be dangerous if at some point a North Korean ballistic missile sub could slip away and get behind the THAAD anti-missile systems of South Korea and Japan. THAAD radar has only a 120-degree field of view and thus theoretically an ocean-going submarine could hit them from behind.

They are also a means for North Korea to improve its solid fuel technology. North Korea has already developed a land-based version of the solid-fuel KN-11, mounted on caterpillar tracks like a tank. Solid-fuel rockets don’t require a lengthy fueling cycle prior to launch. They don’t need as many support vehicles. That makes them much harder to find and if necessary attack prior to launching.

“That’s the more worrisome thing,” says Hanham.

What this illustrates is that North Korea is not just developing individual nuclear weapons to wave at the US, as if fear alone is their goal. They’re developing a nuclear arsenal intended to implement a strategy that could well seem rational to North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.

The basis is this: North Korea’s nukes are intended to preserve the country’s current regime. That means they are meant to deter both a conventional invasion and any strategic nuclear exchange.

The basic idea is to use one set of nuclear weapons to prevent conventional war, while reserving longer-range and more powerful weapons to hold off nuclear annihilation by US forces, according to Dr. Narang of MIT. This is a doctrine of “asymmetric escalation,” adopted by countries with relatively weak conventional forces facing stronger foes.

With its short- and medium-range missile tests, North Korea has shown it has the capability to hit US military bases in South Korea, Japan, and Guam. In the event of an invasion of North Korean territory by these allies, Pyongyang might launch nuclear weapons at the US installations in the region to try and get that invasion to stop.

The Pyongyang leadership would then count on Washington fearing its long-range ICBMs and H-bomb enough to refrain from launching nuclear weapons in response to the regional attacks. The war might grind to a halt with the territorial status quo intact.

“And with [North Korea’s] ICBM and purported thermonuclear weapons test, I think we have to assume that they can deter American nuclear retaliation after that first use by plausibly holding major American cities at risk now,” emails Narang.

Of course, the human cost of any such conflict would be immense. US military bases in East Asia are located in populated areas; hundreds of thousands of civilians would likely be killed if North Korea launched nukes. But North Korea would count on Washington deciding in the end that it would not risk the destruction of a US city to launch nuclear retaliation.

[mystlnewsonline]

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/military-com-releases-list-top-10-military-stories-2017/57730/

Military.com Releases List of Top 10 Military Stories of 2017

MCLEAN, Va./ Dec. 28, 2017 (STL.NEWS) — The U.S. military saw a number of newsworthy events during the past year, from the swearing in of a new president and commander-in-chief to deadly ship collisions in the Pacific that triggered a leadership reorganization of the Navy’s 7th Fleet.

The list, compiled by Military.com Editor Brendan McGarry, highlights 10 stories from 2017 determined to have the most editorial significance.

“This was a dramatic year for the military, as evidenced by a number of stories but most notably by the tragic destroyer collisions in the Pacific,” McGarry said. “More service members died this year in the Pacific than in Afghanistan, and those accidents revealed stunning lapses in training and leadership.”

The top 10 military stories of 2017 are:

1. DEADLY SHIP COLLISIONS ROCK THE NAVY’S SURFACE FLEET Seventeen sailors were killed this summer when two U.S. Navy destroyers, in separate incidents, collided with commercial vessels in the Pacific. The first occurred June 17, when the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald struck the Philippine-flagged tanker ACX Crystal off the coast of Japan, claiming the lives of seven sailors when compartments flooded. The second incident occurred two months later, on Aug. 21, when the USS John S. McCain hit the Liberian-flagged container ship Alnic MC near the Straits of Malacca, causing the deaths of another 10 sailors. The accidents exposed massive training and leadership problems and resulted in the firing of a number of officials in the 7th Fleet, including the commander, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin.

2. US, NORTH KOREA TENSIONS SKYROCKET AMID NUCLEAR, MISSILE TESTS

North Korea repeatedly rattled the international community this year with a series of ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests that showed major advancements in military technology. The regime of Kim Jong-un in September conducted an underground test of a thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb, designed for an intercontinental ballistic missile. The yield for the North’s sixth and latest nuclear test was estimated at between 100 kilotons and 300 kilotons — its largest to date and many times the destructive power of the atomic weapons the U.S. dropped on Japan during World War II. The regime in November launched an ICBM that flew for 50 minutes and reached an altitude of more than 4,000 kilometers — the longest and highest flight yet of any such test. The U.S. responded with show-of-force exercises with allies in the region, including South Korea and Japan. The U.S. has also blamed the North for the WannaCry ransomware attack that affected computers around the world in May.

3. BERGDAHL PLEADS GUILTY TO DESERTION, AVOIDS PRISON

In one of the most controversial military court cases in years, Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl in October pleaded guilty to deserting his post in 2009 in Afghanistan. While he was later sentenced to receive a dishonorable discharge and reduction in rank to private, he avoided prison time. Bergdahl, 31, was captured by Taliban forces and spent five years in captivity before being released in 2014 as part of a prisoner exchange involving five Taliban members. His trial included testimony from troops who were wounded during missions to find him. Bergdahl, who was held in a cramped cage and beaten by his captors, testified that he was sorry for the wounds suffered by searchers. The controversy continues as lawmakers press the Army to not award him back pay while his attorney seeks to have him receive a POW medal.

4. US BEATS BACK ISIS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, RAMPS UP AIRSTRIKES IN AFGHANISTAN

The U.S. military, with partner forces in Iraq and Syria, helped crush the Islamic State’s last strongholds in Iraq and Syria. American troops on the ground worked with Iraqi and Syrian troops to repel ISIS militants from Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria. While Pentagon officials have been reluctant to disclose the number of U.S. troops on the ground, the Defense Manpower Data Center recently listed 8,992 American service members in Iraq, 1,720 in Syria and 15,298 in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the U.S. ramped up airstrikes, dropping its biggest non-nuclear bomb on the ISIS Khorasan branch and unleashing the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter to bomb Taliban drug labs. Still, the Taliban control or influence 54 of 407 districts in the country, or 13 percent, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

5. AFTER HIGH-PROFILE RECRUIT DEATH, MARINES CRACK DOWN ON HAZING

The Marine Corps took steps to crack down on hazing following the March 18, 2016, death of 20-year-old Raheel Siddiqui, a Pakistani-American Muslim recruit from Michigan who reportedly leapt from the third floor of a squad bay 11 days after arriving at boot camp at Parris Island, S.C. The family is suing the government for $100 million for his death, claiming “negligence on multiple levels of command,” the Detroit Free Press reported. After Siddiqui’s death, 15 drill instructors and five other senior leaders at the boot camp were removed from their posts. Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Felix, a former drill instructor at Parris Island, was named as a senior drill instructor who slapped Siddiqui and made him conduct physical “incentive training” as punishment in the minutes before his suicide. A military jury in November found Felix guilty of tumbling another Muslim recruit in an industrial dryer in a liquor-fueled hazing session, and abusing and assaulting a dozen other recruits.

6. CHURCH SHOOTING REVEALS DOD’S FAILURE TO DISCLOSE CRIMINAL RECORDS

Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, the man who shot and killed 26 people at a Texas church on Nov. 6, had previously served in the U.S. Air Force but received a bad-conduct discharge after being court-martialed for assaulting his wife and child. Kelley was court-martialed in 2012 for two counts of Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: assault on his spouse and assault on their child. He received a bad-conduct discharge, confinement for twelve months and a reduction to the grade of E-1. Even so, the Air Force didn’t forward his criminal record to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as required by law. Because the agency wasn’t aware of his criminal past, Kelley was able to buy an assault rifle-style weapon used in the church shooting, described as the deadliest to occur in Texas. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein ordered a review of the case to avoid similar lapses in the future.

7. AIR FORCE GRAPPLES WITH RISING PILOT SHORTAGE

The Air Force’s pilot shortage this year climbed to about 2,000 airmen, as more service members opted for the better pay and steadier schedules offered by the commercial airline industry. With a pilot shortage estimated at about one in 10 — 2,000 out of 20,000 pilots — the service has rolled out new initiatives in an effort to keep flyers in uniform, including more flight incentive pay and aviation bonus programs. But the efforts may not be enough to combat a readiness crisis that leaders blame on a high number of missions being carried out by a disproportionately small force. As a result, the service may try to force pilots to stay in the cockpit. President Donald Trump in September signed an executive order to voluntarily recall up to 1,000 pilots back to active duty. The Air Force says it doesn’t have any immediate plans to resort to such a tactic but nevertheless now has such authority, just in case.

8. CONGRESS CRIMINALIZES MILITARY REVENGE PORN

In the wake of the Marines United scandal, lawmakers in Congress moved swiftly to criminalize so-called revenge porn in the military. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policy for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, calls for court-martial punishment for troops who engage in revenge porn, or the unauthorized sharing or distribution of “an intimate visual image of a private area of another person.” At least five Marines were punished in the wake of a scandal involving a Facebook page, Marines United, whose members reportedly circulated a hard drive filled with compromising photos of female service members. While the private Facebook group had roughly 30,000 members, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said the number of those found to have possibly engaged in prosecutable activity was much lower.

9. TRUMP ANNOUNCES TRANSGENDER BAN, COURTS BLOCK ORDER

President Donald Trump in July surprised even the Pentagon’s top brass when he announced via Twitter a ban on transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. The president tweeted, “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow … Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” The order was immediately challenged in the courts, which have so far rejected the administration’s request to delay transgender enlistments. There are between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender troops currently serving on active duty, amounting to between 0.1 percent and 0.5 percent of the 1.3 million-member active component, and between 830 and 4,160 in the Selected Reserve, according to a 2016 study by Rand Corp. Advocacy groups put the estimate at closer to 15,000 transgender troops in the ranks. The Defense Department has said the enlistment of transgender recruits will start Jan. 1.

10. SIG SAUER WINS THE ARMY’S MODULAR HANDGUN SYSTEM CONTRACT

The U.S. Army in January awarded Sig Sauer a contract worth $580 million to make the next service pistol based on the company’s P320 handgun. Sig beat out Glock Inc., FN America and Beretta USA, the maker of the current M9 9mm service pistol, in the competition for the Modular Handgun System, or MHS, program. Glock protested the Army’s decision, but the complaint in June was rejected by the Government Accountability Office, which arbitrates federal contract disputes. Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in November began receiving the new XM17 MHS and spent time shooting the new pistol. Weapons officials plan to issue the service’s new sidearm down to the team-leader level. — Richard Sisk, Matthew Cox, Hope Hodge Seck and Oriana Pawlyk contributed to this report. — Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Brendan_McGarry.

About Military.com

Military.com is the nation’s largest military and veteran online news and membership organization serving active duty personnel, reservists, guard members, retirees, veterans, family members, defense workers and those considering military careers. Military.com enables Americans with military affinity to access their benefits, advance their careers, enjoy military discounts, and stay connected for life. Military.com is a business unit of Monster Worldwide Inc. More information is available at www.military.com.

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SOURCE: Military.com, Distribute by PRNewswire.com, published on STL.NEWS by St. Louis Media, LLC (PS)