It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed Wednesday his nation will "demonstrate its mettle to the U.S." and never put its weapons programs up for negotiations, a day after test-launching its first intercontinental ballistic missile. The hard line suggests more tests are being prepared as the country tries to perfect nuclear-armed missiles capable of striking anywhere in the United States.
Tuesday's ICBM launch, confirmed by U.S. and South Korean officials, is a milestone in North Korea's efforts to develop long-range missiles with nuclear warheads. It isn't there yet - some analysts suggest it will take several more years and many more tests to perfect such an arsenal - but a successful launch of an ICBM has long been seen as a red line after which it would only be a matter of time if North Korea isn't stopped.
Worry spread in Washington and at the United Nations, where the United States, Japan and South Korea requested an emergency U.N. Security Council session on Wednesday. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed that the missile was an ICBM and said the U.S. response would include "stronger measures to hold the DPRK accountable," using the acronym for the nation's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The uproar only seemed to inspire North Korea, whose propaganda machine rarely fails to aggrandize its leader and its military or to thumb its nose at rivals Seoul and Washington.
The report said Kim "stressed that the protracted showdown with the U.S. imperialists has reached its final phase and it is the time for the DPRK to demonstrate its mettle to the U.S., which is testing its will in defiance of its warning."
originally posted by: crappiekat
Interesting map.
fingfx.thomsonreuters.com...
Is China going to allow this behavior?
originally posted by: xstealth
Update:
Top missile experts are now claiming this latest launched showed the ability that North Korea has the ability to attach a nuclear payload and deliver it.
It's far more advanced than most claimed, and they're much further ahead than the US/SK military gave them credit for being.
This is a very serious situation.
twitter.com...
originally posted by: LightAssassin
a reply to: Blaine91555
Could he not land it near the coast of the US in the ocean, detonate it, and wreak havoc with a man-made tsunami? I figure that would be more effective, and also require to be less accurate.
originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: Blaine91555
The problem is that it's not just us. If war with the North breaks out South Korea and Japan are going to get hammered. We can't act unilaterally when through South is going to take brutal casualties and lose so much of their infrastructure.