On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 02:20 PM, James A. Donald wrote:
1. Ballistic trajectories are very sensitive to the earth's exact shape, including mascons along the precise path (nearly under it). The U.S. spent tens of billions carefully launching satellites and mapping the mascons and shape, and even accounting for exact moon and sun positions at every launch time. While the Koreans could maybe buy some of this data from Russia, the trajectory from DPRK is different from that of the missile fields in Russia. In other words, their missiles would deviate by tens of miles even if they made it.Trouble is, west coast might be in reach of North Korea, east coast is not.They will be testing another missile soon. We shall see how far it goes. They would not waste a nuke on an untested missile --- which is why they test them.
2. Missiles also depend on a myriad of other technologies, none of which the DPRK has. Precision gyroscopes, precision thrusters, guidance computers. For launching inaccurately for a few hundred miles, simple guidance systems and 1955-era rocket technology is OK. But not for suborbital flights.
3. They may have enough U-235 and Pu-239 for a crude, dirty, semi-fizzling bomb, but not the knowhow to shrink it to the size where they could loft it transcontinentally.
George Tenet of the CIA was irresponsible, perhaps criminally, in lying as he did. A wiser and more honest man would have snorted at the question and said "Senators, it took us 10 years of testing, with all of our private aerospace expertise, and our free enterprise system, before we could successfully launch missiles. There is no way a North Korean rocket could hit West Coast targets."
But this did not fit the saber-rattling, so Tenet lied.
Someday he will go before a firing squad.
--Tim May
