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[Sheb]

One of the main questions however is whether NK can actually miniaturize a nuke to fit on any missile. That's the thing experts have been most skeptical about.

Is it? I mean, we're speaking about nuke: if they show an ICBM capability and claim they can fit a nuke on it, you can't take the risk of assuming they're lying.

[Reelya]

Well they've been working on nukes since 1948 according to articles, so going on 70 years they've been at it. And they're roughly about where Russia was around the early 1950s, except far less reliably. They're also dirt poor and have fuck all resources and/or oil consumption. So in other words I don't see much evidence that their shoddy weapons program is going to churn out anything world-class in the near future. They just don't have enough of critical resource flow (oil) coming it to maintain any sort of operational threat. Making stuff is only 10% of the battle, you need to maintain it as operational gear, with all the technical shit that comes with that.

Basically there are two possibilities. (1) their regime implodes, or (2) they manage to somehow build something that can hit somewhere, anywhere. My bet is that (1) happens in a shorter timeframe than (2).

PS: notice how North Korea never boasts about how accurate their missiles are. If they had any sort of targeting worked out, you can be sure they'd aim for specific locations in the ocean and drop missiles right there, and boast about it. They don't make any mention of that, so you can be pretty sure that their targeting systems absolutely suck.

[Sheb]

Yeah, they can't win a battle. But they can kills hundred of thousands easily (especially if they can nuke Seoul). Sure, it'd be the end of the regime, but what if the regime is already toppling?

[Neonivek]

Honestly given descriptions of North Korea... It would take something amazing to make their regime implode.

Yeah, they can't win a battle. But they can kills hundred of thousands easily (especially if they can nuke Seoul). Sure, it'd be the end of the regime, but what if the regime is already toppling?

What else could they do to encourage it more than what is already happening? Well, I guess the leader could insult his own military.

[Reelya]

NK never mentions targeting, just range. My bet is that if they were capable of pinpointing Seoul, they'd drop some missiles into the ocean a similar distance away with similar accuracy and boast about it.

[Sheb]

NK never mentions targeting, just range. My bet is that if they were capable of pinpointing Seoul, they'd drop some missiles into the ocean a similar distance away with similar accuracy and boast about it.

Seoul is about 20 km across and less than 40 km from the NK border. There's not much pinpointing needed.

[Reelya]

However, they've been saying "within 5 years" for an NK icbm for like ... 20 years now. This is from a 2000-2005 google search, result is dated 2001:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/roguestate/resources/huisken.htm

This study, chaired by Donald Rumsfeld (Defence Secretary under President Ford in the mid-1970s and re-appointed to that position by President George W. Bush) concluded that states like North Korea and Iran could threaten the US with ballistic missiles tipped with biological or nuclear warheads within about five years of a decision to do so.

Any time someone tells you of something unlikely happening "within 5 years" no matter the subject append "yeah bullshit" on the end. "within 5 years" is what people write when they're talking out their asses but want to make something sound plausibly soon.

And googling 1995-2000, I can find that claim at least as early as 1998.
https://fas.org/rlg/991117.htm

The Rumsfeld Commission on July 15, 1998 reported that an elementary ICBM force could emerge in North Korea, Iran, or Iraq, within five years of a dedicated program to produce such a capability

EDIT: found the same claim from a 1996 study. the search blurb was actually:

Dec 15, 1996. The North Koreans may deploy an ICBM capable of reaching the United. States within five years....

https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=439600
It's a Navy doctoral thesis written by an intelligence officer, but still, it's unlikely he thought that up himself, the intelligence crowd were probably selling the "NK ICBM within 5 years" stuff before he even started his doctorate, so it originates around the early 1990s, e.g. around 25 years they've been making the same exact assessment.

"Within 5 years" is military intelligence coding for "could happen one day, but give us more money now".

[Neonivek]

In all fairness "In 5 years" is like "If they made it a national priority" and possibly "With a bit of help"

Then again... that itself is misleading because the person reading the report would likely not catch onto that.

I mean yeah if I dropped absolutely everything I could probably make a car in 5 years.

[Dorsidwarf]

North Korea could definitely be wiped out by the SK and US forces all around it with no hope of survival. It's just that the south won't launch s first strike because the North Koreans have spent seventy years ranging an estimated 10,000 heavily-emplaced artillery pieces onto Seoul, because they know their only chance of survival as a country is based around being too costly in military and civilian and economic terms for their enemies to consider it.

[Reelya]

Just manning those artillery pieces properly would take a significant chunk of the NK population if 20 people were needed to properly man and handle logistics and everything per artillery piece, that would account for 1% of the entire population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_battery
Apparently 20 people per artillery piece is about right, but that's not counting logistics and supply lines etc. So presuming they actually have 10000 heavy artillery pieces properly manned, that would need about a quarter of a million people to do that.

[Sheb]

However, they've been saying "within 5 years" for an NK icbm for like ... 20 years now. This is from a 2000-2005 google search, result is dated 2001:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/roguestate/resources/huisken.htm

This study, chaired by Donald Rumsfeld (Defence Secretary under President Ford in the mid-1970s and re-appointed to that position by President George W. Bush) concluded that states like North Korea and Iran could threaten the US with ballistic missiles tipped with biological or nuclear warheads within about five years of a decision to do so.

Any time someone tells you of something unlikely happening "within 5 years" no matter the subject append "yeah bullshit" on the end. "within 5 years" is what people write when they're talking out their asses but want to make something sound plausibly soon.

And googling 1995-2000, I can find that claim at least as early as 1998.
https://fas.org/rlg/991117.htm

The Rumsfeld Commission on July 15, 1998 reported that an elementary ICBM force could emerge in North Korea, Iran, or Iraq, within five years of a dedicated program to produce such a capability

EDIT: found the same claim from a 1996 study. the search blurb was actually:

Dec 15, 1996. The North Koreans may deploy an ICBM capable of reaching the United. States within five years....

https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=439600
It's a Navy doctoral thesis written by an intelligence officer, but still, it's unlikely he thought that up himself, the intelligence crowd were probably selling the "NK ICBM within 5 years" stuff before he even started his doctorate, so it originates around the early 1990s, e.g. around 25 years they've been making the same exact assessment.

"Within 5 years" is military intelligence coding for "could happen one day, but give us more money now".

Are you just copy/pasting unrelated old posts of yours?

[Starver]

...anyway... Seoul doesn't need nuking, it's well within range of a barrage (deadly, if not obliterating) should anyone care to, and straight nukes are more hypothetical threat at the moment.

Which is why I was already wondering if some of the unconventional (or 'failed') rocket experiments were smarter than they seemed.  With Thaad now seemingly deployed to all good South Korean golf courses (well, one of them, but maybe it's the best one, I don't play golf so I wouldn't care to know), they're perhaps looking at rocketry that'll pass well over any shield and hit things currently considered unreachable.

For crowing about accuracy, maybe it's not accurate enough yet.  An NK 'fishing boat' in the rough area of where the 'short' test came down could not yet have reported sufficiently favourable results to boast about.  Though should the fishing boat gets wet from the splash, they then know they've got a (conventional) delivery system they can rattle, sabre-like, at their enemies, and then NK gets to be taken even more seriously.

[Reelya]

Are you just copy/pasting unrelated old posts of yours?

No, i looked that stuff up just now. What you're thinking of is that they also did the same thing about Iranian ICBMs, and I posted about that in a different thread. Everyone is going to get ICBMs "within 5 years", for the last 20+ years. And funnily enough, not one single nation that they've claimed would gain ICBMs "within 5 years" since the mid 1990s actually has developed ICBMs. The only nation  that's gained ICBMs since the end of the Cold War is India, who have never been listed on those "likely to get ICBMs" lists.

It's thread-relevant because people are in fact buying into the "any day now" rhetoric. The fact that they've constantly made the same claims of "any day now" for a few decades is in fact relevant to estimating the believability at this stage.

"but this time really really" doesn't cut it, because they've said that every time for 20+ years. The messenger isn't believable basically, so it's hard to glean much from any claims that are made, since they're coming from the same sources who haven't been right in the past.

When they keep claiming a laundry list of enemy nations are on the verge of launching ICBMs any day now, and constantly repeat that for decades and it never really eventuates for any of the nations you really do have to ask whether they're just crying wolf, or whether any of their estimates are any better than "maybe might happen one day at some unspecified point in the future".

[martinuzz]

There's a difference between accusing nations of covertly developing nuclear weapons, and responding to a nation overtly developing nuclear weapons and boasting about how they can hit the US.

[Sheb]

Just because someone cried wolf a lot doesn't mean this time can't be real. They have been making steady progress in increasing the range of their launch device and detonated what, 4 or 5 nukes? It might be five years, it might be a tad more, but they're seriously going in that direction.

In that context, you claiming that they certainly can't hit Seoul seems a tad ridiculous.