Yet to master the art of destruction
North Korea still trying to figure out way to deliver a nuclear bomb to the US
WASHINGTON: The United States intelligence officials are pretty sure North Korea can put a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental missile that could reach the United States. But experts aren’t convinced the bomb could make it all that way intact.
They cite lingering questions about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s nuclear know-how.
“I don’t think North Korea has a good measure of how accurate the missile is at this point,” said Michael Elleman, an expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“They don’t know if the re-entry technologies will really hold up – whether the bomb will survive the trip.”
North Korea has short-range missiles that can hit its neighbours.
It has tested an intermediate one that could strike Guam, a US territory, as well as a longer-range missile that could reach Hawaii and perhaps the US West Coast.
The intermediate and long-range missiles are still being developed and it’s still questionable whether they can reliably strike targets.
The North must conduct more tests to master what is known as “re-entry” in missile parlance, experts believe. The process involves shielding a nuclear warhead from the high temperatures and force it faces when it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere at about 15,500mph (7km a second).
“In principle, Kim Jong Un could hit the United States with a nuclear weapon,” said Elleman, a former scientist at Lockheed Martin’s Research and Development Laboratory who also worked as missile expert for Umited Nation weapons inspection missions.
“In practice, I think they are probably a half-year to a full year away from having something that will work more often than it would fail.”
Joseph Bermudez Jr, an internationally recognised expert on North Korean defence and intelligence affairs and ballistic missile development, agrees.
“Putting these things all together and making them work is extremely challenging, and they haven’t yet demonstrated a capability to produce a reliable re-entry vehicle, which is what houses the actual nuclear device,” he said. “Remember, they’ve only tested these systems very few times.”
Still, Bermudez said, North Korea is “on track” to figure it out.
US officials also think it’s just a matter of time before Kim’s pro- gramme fully matures.
National Intelligence Director Dan Coats told Congress in May that Kim has been photographed beside a nuclear warhead design and missile airframes to show that North Korea has warheads small enough to fit on a missile.
That same month, Lt-Gen Vincent Stewart, the Defence Intelligence Agency director, told lawmakers that while Kim must still work on the technical aspects of re-entry, it’s only a “matter of enough trial and error to make that work. They understand the physics, so it’s just a matter of design.”
Coats and Stewart testified before North Korea conducted its first test of an intercontinental missile on July 4. On July 28, it conducted a second test of its long-range Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile.
The second test flight was captured by a rooftop camera operated by Japan’s NHK television on the northern island of Hokkaido. Elleman, who analysed the video, concluded that it most likely “disintegrated” before splashdown, suggesting North Korea is still strug- gling with re-entry.
“I think it probably failed fairly late in the process,” said John Schilling, a consultant with 38 North, a respected website on North Korea at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
Schilling said the success of North Korean missiles also depend on the weight of the payload. That’s the weight of the nuclear weapon plus its heat-shielding re-entry system.
North Korea is able to make one that weighs between 1,100 and 1,300 pounds, or between 500kg and 600kg. One that size might reach West Coast targets, Schilling said. But North Korea would need to make one lighter to strike farther east.
“It needs to be light in order to achieve range, but it also needs to be built fairly tough to survive, and those two things are at odds with one another,” Schilling said.
“Too light is a problem in that the payload would be too fragile and won’t survive the trip, particularly atmospheric re-entry at the far end.”
On Tuesday, a news report said North Korea could now wed nuclear warheads with its missiles, including its longest-range ones that might be able to hit the continental United States. The nuclear advances were detailed in an official Japanese assessment and in a story by The Washington Post that cited US intelligence officials and a confidential Defence Intelligence Agency report.
President Donald Trump is warning North Korea not to make any more threats or face “fire and fury like the world has never seen”.
North Korea then announced a detailed plan to launch missiles toward the US Pacific territory of Guam, a major military hub and home to US bombers.
On Friday, Trump tweeted: “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.” — AP