[The Hill] Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) on Monday said North Korea's aggressive actions are motivated by the hope that the hostile state can strike a nuclear deal with President Trump similar to the one given to Iran during Obama's administration.
"I think that, right now, they don’t want to fight the United States," Franks said on CNN's "New Day."
"The reality is that North Korea has been paying attention," he continued, pointing to the past weapons deals Pyongyang has made with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
The Arizona lawmaker says he believes North Korea observed the "incredible compensation" given to Iran in its landmark nuclear deal, motivating them to try to receive the same.
"And then they watched the Iran nuclear deal. In that case, there was incredible compensation given so North Korea is hoping to somehow bluff their way into greater compensation," the House Armed Services Committee member said, adding that the deal did not force Iran to dismantle is nuclear weapons program.
Trump begrudgingly certified that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear deal in July, despite fiercely criticized the agreement as the "the worst deal ever."
Franks's remarks come at a time of heightened tensions after Pyongyang conducted string of recent missile tests and advancement of its nuclear program.
#4
We can give them nukes. A dozen each, launched from a Boomer, not far off shore. A lot of people will be upset, howler a lot, condemn, but in the end, do what they do so well now, nothing. Two problems solved. Hey, they all hate us anyway, so what.
[New York Times] When North Korea launched long-range missiles this summer, and again on Friday, demonstrating its ability to strike Guam and perhaps the United States mainland, it powered the weapons with a rare, potent rocket fuel that American intelligence agencies believe initially came from China and Russia. Sourced by China and Russia? Shocking, absolutely shocking.
The United States government is scrambling to determine whether those two countries are still providing the ingredients for the highly volatile fuel and, if so, whether North Korea’s supply can be interrupted, either through sanctions or sabotage. Among those who study the issue, there is a growing belief that the United States should focus on the fuel, either to halt it, if possible, or to take advantage of its volatile properties to slow the North’s program.
But it may well be too late. Intelligence officials believe that the North’s program has advanced to the point where it is no longer as reliant on outside suppliers, and that it may itself be making the potent fuel, known as UDMH. Despite a long record of intelligence warnings that the North was acquiring both forceful missile engines and the fuel to power them, there is no evidence that Washington has ever moved with urgency to cut off Pyongyang’s access to the rare propellant.
Classified memos from both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations laid out, with what turned out to be prescient clarity, how the North’s pursuit of the highly potent fuel would enable it to develop missiles that could strike almost anywhere in the continental United States.
In response to inquiries from The New York Times, Timothy Barrett, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said that "based on North Korea’s demonstrated science and technological capabilities ‐ coupled with the priority Pyongyang places on missile programs ‐ North Korea probably is capable of producing UDMH domestically." UDMH is short for unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine.
[Times of India] NEW DELHI: India has lately been going hammer and tongs at Pakistan, at international forums and at bilateral meetings, with the newest salvo fired yesterday at the 36th UN Human Rights Congress (UNHRC) when it called its neighbour "the face of international terrorism" and accused it of pursuing "perverse political objectives".
To be sure, some of these occasions that India has criticised Pakistan have been after the latter, as it its wont, has brought up the issue of Kashmir at international forums, like it did at the UNHRC yesterday and like it did last Friday at the UN+ in New York.
Pakistan often looks for ways to bring up the bilateral issue+ of Kashmir on global forums, even though it has been told many times, by both the UN and the US - but not by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) - that issues to do with the troubled state are the business of India and Pakistan alone.
That doesn't appear to matter to Pakistan.
In Geneva, at the UNHRC session that ended yesterday, Pakistan said: "...human needs, desires and the right to self-determination" are "being abused" in Kashmir". It then talked of "10,000 persons ... detained and tortured" in the state, according to a UNHRC statement on its proceedings.
India then exercised its 'right of reply', to savage Pakistan and to talk of how it is once again misusing an international platform. India also said that Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir "is run by a 'deep state' and has become an epicentre of terrorism" where as Kashmiris in J&K have time and again reaffirmed their destiny through India's democratic processes.
"Pakistan has been misusing this august platform to pursue its perverse political objectives...Pakistan's unsolicited and unwarranted comments pertaining to the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir are factually incorrect and absolutely misleading. We outrightly (sic) reject them," said Vishnu Reddy, Indian Foreign Service officer and India's representative at the UNHRC.
[DefenseOne] If North Korea cooperated and shot their new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-14, at the United States with adequate warning so that we could prepare, and if the warhead looked pretty much like we expect it to look, and if they only shot one, and if they did not try to spoof the defense with decoys that looked like the warhead, or block the defense with low-power jammers, or hide the warhead in a cloud of chaff, or blind the defense by attacking the vulnerable radars, then, maybe this is true. The United States might have a 50-50 chance of hitting such a missile. If we had time to fire four or five interceptors, then the odds could go up.
But North Korea is unlikely to cooperate. It will do everything possible to suppress the defenses. The 1999 National Intelligence Estimate of the Ballistic Threat to the United States noted that any country capable of testing a long-range ballistic missile would "rely initially on readily available technology ‐ including separating RVs [reentry vehicles], spin-stabilized RVs, RV reorientation, radar absorbing material, booster fragmentation, low-power jammers, chaff, and simple (balloon) decoys ‐ to develop penetration aids and countermeasures."
Our anti-missile systems have never been realistically tested against any of these simple countermeasures. This is one reason that the Pentagon’s current director of operational testing is much more cautious in his assessments than missile defense program officials. "GMD has demonstrate a limited capability to defend the U.S. Homeland from small numbers of simple intermediate-range or intercontinental ballistic missile threats launched from North Korea or Iran," he reports. Moreover, it is impossible, he says, to "quantitatively assess GMD performance due to lack of ground tests" and "the reliability and availability of the operational GBI’s [Ground-Based Interceptors] is low, and the MDA continues to discover new failure modes during testing."
#1
...And of course, the fact that none of the countermeasures this guy lists have been seen shouldn't stop us from panicking and surrendering.
Realistically, the Nork ICBMs are - technology wise - the equal of our first generation Minuteman missiles from the early 60s. They go up, they come down, and with a little luck they go boom. In terms of capability, right now it's a V2 with more range and accuracy.
That isn't to say that they might not develop them in the future, but they sure as hell don't have them now.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/19/2017 5:28 Comments ||
Top||
#2
...... he reports. Moreover, it is impossible, he says, to "quantitatively assess GMD performance due to lack of ground tests" and "the reliability and availability of the operational GBI’s [Ground-Based Interceptors] is low, and the MDA continues to discover new failure modes during testing."
Flag tossed. WTF good are they if they cannot be employed? I suspect we've been waved off. Nice array of satellite communications platforms you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to any of them.
#3
It seems that launch accidents happen often so imagining a rocket to be super-robust and able to withstand even minimal damage seems to be giving the North Koreans more credit than they deserve.
Also testing nukes in a bunker under super-controlled conditions seems to be fairly hit-and-miss for the North Koreans. Expecting a warhead to go off as planned after the jarring it would take along the journey seems to be giving the North Koreans a bit too much credit as well.
Not to say that there isn't something to fear here, but realistically the chances of one of their missiles avoiding all attempts to damage it and having it hit a distant target in shape to have the warhead explode as intended seems a bit unlikely to me. At this point.
h/t Instapundit
...But this column is not about baneful Democrats, bashful Republicans, media dust-ups, the latest Hollywood lefty threatening to leave the country, or even the president's disinclination for politics-as-usual.
Rather, I offer an inventory of under-analyzed, unilateral U-turns undertaken during the initial stages of the Trump administration.
So the TV stars all came out last night to give each other Emmy awards. They mocked Donald Trump, and high-fived one another over how good their jokes were.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump prepared to give his speech to the UN on Tuesday as leader of the free world.
As a lesser president once said, "At least I'll go down in history as a president."
While Stephen Colbert danced in a homophobic and transphobic routine, President Trump presided over the national government.
While Lily Tomlin called him a bigot, Trump was selecting judges for lifetime appointments.
He's cutting regulations.
He's burying the legacy of his unfit, inexperienced, and intellectually sloppy predecessor.
The Emmy crowd cracked itself up. They are the cool kids, they tell themselves.
Donald Trump is the president of the United States. He will be for another three to seven years.
They laugh because they don't want to cry.
Nothing they say or do can change that. Impeachment? For what? The emoluments clause?
President Trump's opponents have tried everything they could to stop him, and he just rolls along -- a steamroller trampling his enemies.
[UPI] U.S. Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis warns that the military is in grave danger of becoming a "hollow force."
Few Americans, especially in Congress, understand that the most pernicious and potentially most dangerous threat to the United States military is not North Korea, Daesh, Iran or even Russia or China. Instead, this threat is homegrown, ironically arising from the law and the way the Department of Defense is forced to conduct its business.
In a letter to Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with copies to other members dated Sept. 8, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis specified reasons why the U.S. military is in grave danger.
Citing the harm done to the U.S. military by a combination of continuing resolutions, as opposed to passing a real defense budget; sequestration that imposes mandatory and arbitrary cuts; and budget caps that limit defense spending, Mattis bluntly informed Congress that without relief "our air, land and sea fleets will erode." The secretary's understatement speaks volumes. In fact, the U.S. military is at great risk of becoming a "hollow force," that is a force incapable of carrying out its missions and infected with low morale.
Following Vietnam, as happens after every war, the U.S. military imploded into a hollow force. The consequence is that when it was ordered into action, it often failed. Desert One, the raid to free 54 Americans held hostage in Tehran in 1980 was the textbook case of military failure. Had war broken out in Korea or against the Soviet Union, it would not have gone well. Fortunately, deterrence and containment prevailed and the hollow force did no lasting damage to the nation.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.