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North Korea shows video of nuclear attack on the US during nationalistic concert

Ironically, the nuclear attack fate of America’s Entire West Coast could eventually lie in the hands of the one man they hate the most, President Donald Trump….now isn’t that special?

~Refocus Notes

UK Guardian

By Alan Yuhas in San Francisco

In test blasts, military parades, and propaganda videos that show San Francisco and Washington DC in ruins, North Korea has broadcast its intention to be a world nuclear power.

Less clear, experts say, is how close the secretive nation is to realizing its ambitions to threaten the mainland of the United States.

As rhetoric between the two nations has ratcheted up in recent weeks, residents of major west coast cities such as San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle have begun to ask out loud: should they be worried?

After five nuclear tests in a decade, North Korea has already shown that it poses a nuclear threat to South Korea and Japan, roughly 80,000 American soldiers stationed in those countries, and to China, its nominal ally. But although Kim Jong-un has dramatically increased missile testing since he took power in 2011, North Korea has yet to test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could cross nearly 5,500 miles of the Pacific.

North Korea would need to overcome two feats of engineering to threaten the American mainland: a working ICBM system and a warhead for one of those missiles. Unlike shorter-range missiles, long-range missiles have multiple engines and flight stages, meaning North Korean engineers have to make rockets – and bombs – that can survive the violent vibrations of launch, the wrenching g-forces of flight, and the temperature changes of takeoff and re-entry from space.

“Producing a warhead that can handle all that is a challenge,” said Joseph Bermudez, an analyst for 38 North, a think tank affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Although Kim has said he wants to test an ICBM later this year, Bermudez doubted the test would be a success.

In February, North Korea fired a medium-range missile into the Sea of Japan, traveling about 300 miles. North Korea has also developed a missile with an estimated range of 2,200 miles, almost halfway to Hawaii, but so far struggled to launch it.

Until North Korea begins ICBM tests, it will be difficult to gauge the country’s capabilities, said Joshua Pollack, a senior researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.

“If they do get to the point where they decide to start a campaign of ICBM flight testing, that will allow them to work through the usual technical difficulties,” he said, noting that they had an “impressive” record of solving problems. “It will allow them in time, I’m confident, to create a reliable weapon.”

But Pollack was wary about any timeline. “They could flight test an ICBM today and it could work or it could take them a year or two,” he said. “I really hesitate to say anything about it.”

Other experts have offered cautious estimates, based on the rate of testing in the last six years. “If everything proceeds as is, it’s likely by 2020 that they could have a system reaching the United States,” Bermudez said. “It should be viewed as an emerging threat.”

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