Popular Science:
In 1957, the Soviet Union tested the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile. Its harmless payload, the beeping satellite Sputnik, flared bright across the night sky, a reminder to all the world of the missile that put it there. Sixty years later, North Korea is expected to be the fifth country to join that exclusive club, after the United States, China, and India. And while Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian state is quiet about the developments, there’s enough information available to the public that the question for 2017 isn’t will North Korea test a missile, but when?
In September 2016, experts warned that North Korea would have a working intercontinental nuclear missile by 2020. Between now and then, we’ve been in a period of uncertainty: North Korea may test a missile that may be capable of carrying a warhead that may be miniaturized enough to fit inside the missile.
“The language I often use is—as a scientist officially—no we don’t know if they have a warhead. They may, or they may not. We don’t have enough evidence,” says Melissa Hanham, a senior researcher at the James Martin Center for nonproliferation studies. “That being said, as a policymaker, I really suggest that we start behaving like they do.”
The evidence Melissa cites is not trivial: North Korea’s conducted five nuclear tests, with the most recent one just over a year ago. North Korea’s state-run paper published a picture of their dictator Kim Jong-un standing in front of a faceted silver sphere, which almost resembles a disco ball.
“We can’t see what’s inside that object, but we can view other things, we can take measurements, and we can make estimates of the weight and that kind of thing. That silver disco ball definitely fits into the payload of an ICBM or other shorter-range missiles too,” Hanham continued, “but whether it’s real or not is not something we can determine from pictures alone.”
Ballistic missiles are the main way countries threaten each other with nuclear weapons, but they’re not the only way. The only atomic bombs ever used in war were carried by bombers, but bombers come with several limitations. They have to fly close to the target to release the bombs, and they can be shot down by fighters and other anti-air weapons en route. Submarines, instead, can carry missiles secretly under the sea, and then launch their deadly payload without warning. North Korea is currently pursuing a submarine-launched ballistic missile, which went from a spectacular failure of a test in December 2015 to a modestly successful 300-mile flight in a test in August 2016.
Besides submarine missiles, North Korea’s arsenal includes short- and intermediate-range missiles, which can threaten nearby countries but still can’t cross the Pacific ocean to the United States. To strike at America, it’d need to travel several thousand miles, something only intercontinental missiles available to Russia, the United States, China, India, and maybe Israel can do…
