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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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manjumicha20 - 07:55pm Sep 21, 2003 EST (# 13829 of 13836)

Premise b: North Korea's bombs are more primitive than the Nagasaki bomb. The premise is a wishful thinking and false. North Korean nuclear scientists - including over 100 Ph.Ds from Russia's Dubna nuclear lab in Siberia, have designed and built a number of nuclear reactors and spent fuel reprocessing plants. Their technical competence should not be under-estimated. Recently, the US CIA has detected tell-tale signs of cold explosion tests of nukes (tiny nukes with limited thermal yields). It would be safer to assume that North Korea's bomb designers know how to make 'modern' nukes that require only one kg or less of nuclear fissile matter (uranium and/or plutonium).

Assuming one kg of plutonium per bomb and assuming a figure of about 96 kg (41 kg home-made + 55 kg purchased), one would come out with 96 nukes that are small enough to fit on a missile yet powerful enough to kill over 100,000 Japanese or American city dwellers. If we were to factor in the enriched uranium, which North Korea is believed to be producing for years and which may run in the hundreds or the thousands of kg by now, a figure of 'over 200' nukes sounds plausible.

Why does North Korea insist that it has no nukes?

This proposition revolves around the question when a nuke is a nuke. A nuclear bomb is made of several components.

The bomb components are normally stored at separate location for safety and security. In particular, the "physics package" - often referred to as the 'pit' - is armed moments prior to detonation.

Going back to the question, when is a nuke a nuke, one may argue that a nuke is a nuke if, and only if, it is fully armed and ready to explode. This argument has been used effectively by Israel for many years. In fact, the US military, too, using this argument, claims that it has no nukes in South Korea. Recently, a depot of fissile matter was uncovered at the US nuclear sub base at Jinhae, South Korea, and when you see a fissile depot, you can bet your boot that other nuke components are not too far away. North Korea, too, has been using this argument.

This begs the question, if North Korea has no nukes assembled to explode, how would one go about disarming North Korea's nuclear deterrence? It would be impossible to locate and eliminate all nuke parts of North Korea, and the best one can hope for is to locate and remove all bomb fissile matter and at the same time, disable North Korea's capacity to make more fissile matter. Would this be feasible? Most unlikely. The only precedent of a nuclear power denuked is South Africa that had a small nuclear force of about five nukes of gun type. Under intense external and internal pressures, it destroyed its puny nuke arsenal.

Unlike South Africa, North Korea, being isolated as it is already, is immune to any external pressure and it has not internal pressure. It has no Mandela agittating for denuclearization. Most importantly, North Korea, with its granite mountains that shelter deep underground facilities and its citizens well prepared for nuclear strikes, is, perhaps, the only nation today that is well prepared to fight a nuclear war. America has superior nuclear strike forces but it is more or less naked to nuclear attacks. So is Japan. It goes without saying that both Japan and America have the resources to fortify themselves for nuclear attacks. But such projects will cost trillions and many years to complete. The economy of either Japan or America is too weak to absorb such astronomical endeavors. As things stand now, North Korea is a better position to withstand nuclear holocaust than Japan or America. It is true that much of the surface structures in North Korea will be gone (nothing new here for they were totally destroyed during the Korean War) but its underground structures will not be.

The best, perhaps the only, option is to stop North Korea from making more bomb materials and entice it to refrain from selling its bombs and bo

manjumicha20 - 08:00pm Sep 21, 2003 EST (# 13830 of 13836)

The best, perhaps the only, option is to stop North Korea from making more bomb materials and entice it to refrain from selling its bombs and bomb-making know-how to the enemies of the United States.

Or as Mazza and Gisterme says....develop the missile shield that is supposed to handle 200 incoming ICBMs, hope that NKs don't have diesel subs capable of shooting off sea-based RCBMs, an then go for the full scale nuclear war to wipe off that nation. But if they do have residual attack capability or the shield doesn't work, then I guess the chips will fall where they may..........

manjumicha20 - 08:17pm Sep 21, 2003 EST (# 13831 of 13836)

Well, regardless of the veracity of this analyst's views, I hope US policy makers are operating on the worst-case scenarios, nothwithstanding mazza and gisterme's gung-ho attidude. But if Robert is right about gisterme's identity, then i guess I don't have much hope....:-)

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