North Korea on Monday tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach anywhere in the U.S., according to government officials in Japan and South Korea. South Korean government officials…
US love to scaremonger about DPRK because they need to justify occupying ROK and Japan, but it's also true that DPRK has been making steady progress. They've even managed to launch a satellite which is quite remarkable. I imagine they'll also be getting some tech transfer from Russia now.
One of the weird parts is that this is a solid fuel rocket. The USSR AFAIK never developed big solid boosters like the US.
Which always struck me as weird considering the USSR's ICBM program was supposed to be mobile from the start and it seems a lot easier to load a solid rocket onto a truck than carrying around (and having to pump) hypergolic mixtures that eat though any container, and kill by detonation, burns, poisoning, and cancer, in that order.
Americans might be dumb enough to think this a reason to invade (again). But honestly, I doubt this is true. As someone else pointed out, it feels like we get scares like this every year which never turn out to be based in any fact.
Very good news. It genuinely makes me happy that the DPRK is able to produce ICBMs. U.S. only speak the language of force, this is the way to go if you want to keep them out of your country.
On the one hand, I don't know if I believe it because it's coming from Japan and SK. On the other hand, I want to believe it because that's great for NK if it works.
Now comes the important part though which is producing these weapons in sufficient quantities to actually establish real deterrence. Because as we have seen in Ukraine it is not enough to simply have a few weapon systems that can theoretically hit their target, what matters most at the end of the day is still quantity. In low numbers almost any weapon can be countered by defensive systems.
In order to really deter aggression you need enough warheads and enough delivery platforms that they will overwhelm any missile defense and guarantee that enough of them will get through to cause more damage than the enemy is prepared to accept for the sake of attacking you. In a sense this is also a political equation because it depends on what price the other side is willing to pay for your defeat.