What’s Up Kim Jong Il’s Nuclear Sleeve?

Early morning July 5 in North Korea, still July 4 at Cape Canaveral, the North Koreans launched the infamous Taepodong-2 missile. I will use “TP2" herein. The TP2 had been moved onto its launch pad a month earlier. Obviously, the NK regime wanted the US to see it. Perhaps they anticipated the huge amount of (free) copy space it would get. North Korea wants attention. Most especially they want the attention of the United States. The Korean War ended in July, 1953, at Panmunjom.

Power. We’ve heard the NK wants, and the US has “more or less” promised to furnish, 2 or 3 nuclear power plants. CIA Factbook shows the NK have very little electric power, and must import all the petroleum they use. About 25,000 bbls per day. The same source gives NK no natural gas so it has no plastics industry, among many of the other things natural gas gives to us.

Food. We know or we are told, that NK has a perennial shortfall in food, many people exist at the very edge of death by starvation. Assuming the Army eats on a regular basis, this may account for the Army’s popularity among NK’s young people.

After the July NK Main Event went sour - Source 1 said the TP2 blew up 40 seconds into its flight. Source 2 said the TD2 merely ran out of fuel and fell into the sea. Source 3 - South Korea - said the missile flew normally for about 6 or 7 minutes and fell into the Sea of Japan sea about 500 kilometers off the Korean shore. The NKs treated the US to a July 4 “fireworks” show by launching 6 old reworked Scuds. Surely left over from the late 1980s. I’m pretty sure I have read the Ruskies stopped making Scuds around the time the USSR collapsed.

Methinks Bush43 has grossed out the TD2 as a means of getting more money for his Star Wars 2 fiasco and to frighten the American electorate on November 7. Not necessarily in that order. Neither Bush43 nor the DoD wanted to test its defense system’s capability to shoot down the TD2. Failure would have revealed the whole program to be a scam. Perhaps the DoD wired Pyongyang a couple million dollars via Western Union to muck up the launch?

OTOH, suppose the NKs decided to scrub the launch themselves. They could see that by doing so the US and maybe others would believe “pressure” had worked and forced NK to do their bidding. Not an outcome a totalitarian regime anticipates cheerfully. It looks now as if NK is going to try again to trade its missile launching capability for the nuclear power plants, food, medicines, other desperately needed items and as much credit as the World Bank will extend.

Can anyone explain how the NKs, limited to a $40 billion GDP, can afford the required support infrastructure for ICBMs. Don’t forget I found that New York has about the same population, but a $900 billion GDP. What I do believe the NKs do have are those old Soviet era Scuds. The Scud is such a primitive missile - is it really a missile or a long range rocket - that you can stack two or three of them together to add to its range. Not its lift capacity, but its range. The Scud still has but one rocket engine. More sections means more fuel means more firing time means more range. Not more lift.

In GW1 Iraq fired off about 40 Scuds. By an unintended fluke of a tv camera, we got the impression the Patriot missiles were actually striking the in-coming Scuds and ”knocking them from the skies!” Not so. No Patriots hit any Scuds. The Scuds were more like the War 2 V1 Vengeance weapons. The V1 used a early pulse jet engine. Frequently mis-labeled as a “ram” jet. At launch, a timer would be set to stop fuel to the engine which let the V1 fall from the sky. A timer was the most complex aiming system onboard the V1.

If the NKs have sufficient uranium or plutonium for 2 to 10 bombs, and are able to make one into a deliverable bomb rather than an explodeable “nuclear device” better suited for hauling to a test site in the back of a 2 ton truck, then NK could Atom Bomb Seoul. And that is a serious problem.

I have absolute confidence the South Koreans are well and fully aware of this serious risk. I expect Prevention is Job 1 in South Korea. I would be totally surprised if the SK did not have very good intel about and a lot of humint in NK. I expect SK has 3 or 4 highly trained Special Forces units poised to go into NK on a moments notice and “take out” any missiles or rockets aimed at South Korea. So, let us stay “cool” over NK and its ICBMs. South Korea is the only target at risk.

The NK ICBMs exist mostly in the minds of the Bush43 GOPs and November 7.



[edit on 7/11/2006 by donwhite]