6 ms·

North Korea fires missile over Japan

91 points by jlipps 9y ago

monksy 9y ago
This leads to the next thing. Violating Japan's airspace with a missile may be a provocation for war. If that's the case, you're going to hear from our (US) president that we're officially going to war or conflict with North Korea. Unfortunately, in this case, I believe that Bannon is right. (We're screwed in that situation)
- imron 9y ago
  Whatever else you think of Bannon, he was, and is staunchly anti-war. I'm not sure you can say that about any of Trumos current advisers.
- ajross 9y ago
  We aren't going to war, at least not intentionally. The downsides of a conflict with a nuclear state, even one with questionable capabilities like the DPRK, vastly outweigh the upsides. And Kim knows this, which is why he feels free to continue to call our bluffs. Trump's inability to bluff (or communicate with precision in general) has really messed things up at this point. I mean, taking his words as spoken he has already threatened to nuke them if they even so much as continue issuing threats. Not only did they up the threat ante within hours of that remark (c.f. "attack the waters around Guam"), they've now put a weapon straight through an ally's airspace. Where do we go from here?
  - wisdomdata 9y ago
    NK will not be going to war, unless by miscalculation. Kim knows that of all the scenarios in a war, none end with him munching on caviar in a palace. There are two major powers that would make certain of that. Why do you think he was so keen to assassinate his half brother?
    - maruhan2 9y ago
      This is where I couldn't figure out his motive. He clearly wants to maintain his reign, but if so, why did he start provoking in the first place?
      - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
        The threats are to extract concessions. The nukes are to make them too dangerous to invade.
        rapind 9y ago
        Some say too dangerous not to invade. It's a complicated situation and there's no easy choice IMO.
      - jonnathanson 9y ago
        Because Kim's reign is predicated on maintaining credibility with his generals. He does that by rattling his saber and extracting economic concessions from the global community in general (and the US in particular). Why he needs to go precisely this far is a good question. Possibly because Trump has consistently misplayed his hand and made a series of stupid bluffs that were quick and easy to call. Kim is probably testing the edges of his geopolitical box, figuring that it's a bit roomier than he'd previously calculated.
        ams6110 9y ago
        Well he already backed off on his Guam threats. How much credibilty does that gain him with his generals, and how did Trump misplay that exactly?
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - jonnathanson 9y ago
    Where do we go from here? To the very brink, at least if Trump is left to his own (mobile) devices. My guess is he will reroute a CBG or two towards the Korean peninsula and make a lot of bluster about whatever new line he is prepared to draw. Meanwhile, everyone else works frantically on a backchannel plan that allows both Kim and Trump to save some face. I don't see how this happens unless brokered by China, who emerges the big winner on the world stage.
    - astrodust 9y ago
      Imagine you're North Korea. Like you give a fuck if the US starts flying things close to your borders. They know that if the US attacks it's game over for South Korea, so unless the US is willing to throw South Korea under the bus the US won't do a damned thing. The US will also have to convince China it was attacked in order to get support. Otherwise China will sit out any conflict, as ugly as it might get. North Korea is really smacking the bear around with a stick here seeing how far they can go before they get bit.
      - helthanatos 9y ago
        North Korea could be completely carpet bombed before they got a middle to South Korea. Why no one is willing to stop North Korea is bewildering.
        Aharito 9y ago
        Even if we just remove the missile sites, and any sort of nuclear ordinance on the first attack, they don't really have nearly as much as they claim capable of hitting Seoul[1], and even then it can only hit the northern 3rd of the city, which is less populated. The city itself has put a lot of work into infrastructure in preparation, enough bunkers and shelters to house 20 million. Yes, it will get hit, people will die, but as long as no nuke comes down, I'd consider than a win, for eliminating such a dangerous tyrant. Of course, coming to terms with China will be an entirely different matter. 1: https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/mind-the-gap-between-rhetoric-and-reality/ https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/mind-th...
  - fao_ 9y ago
    > they've now put a weapon straight through an ally's airspace. Have you studied a map around NK? To get a missile to a target that's free of people in international waters, you have to fly through at least one country's airspace.
    - cattlefarmer 9y ago
      Flying over open water is one thing. The missiles flew straight over populated land.
      - fao_ 9y ago
        Again, there is literally no way for NK to fly the missles to the water WITHOUT going over populated land. Study a map for god's sake.
- Koshkin 9y ago
  According to Washington Post, the rocket has not entered Japan's airspace, it went into the outer space before coming back to Earth to the east of Hokkaido. (Yes, it did cross the projection of Japan onto the heavens.)
TrainedMonkey 9y ago
This is terrifying in light of watching simulated WW3 this morning this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbB0srzLuuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbB0srzLuuo
madads 9y ago
Is there any way an amateur can verify claims of a missile being fired? Does it appear on radar at all? Thinking one of the flight tracking sites. In today's world I'm skeptical to say the least.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Certainly NK has every reason to lie, but I can't imagine why Japan would. Open war with NK would be very dangerous for them.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    Not saying they are lying but Abe has been continously playing with the fear of NK to push his military agenda (the change of constitution and surveillance laws).
- mLuby 9y ago
  No: the missile peaked at 550km (probably about when it was over Japan), so unless a(n un)lucky Japanese civilian in "sparsely populated Hokkaido" was looking toward Pyongyang through a telescope at 6am and tweeted a photo of the missile in boost phase, I'd say you wouldn't even be able to tell what the object was. Furthermore, if you don't trust reports from two nations' militaries, you definitely shouldn't trust anything on the Internet. Hokkaido is beautiful this time of year, just sayin'
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  >In today's world I'm skeptical to say the least. Why? NK has been launching missiles for quite some time now, and this fits reasonably well with their overall pattern of escalation. I don't really pay that much attention to NK, but this launch is utterly unsurprising to me based on my very limited and amateur interest in the subject.
- sorenjan 9y ago
  The flight tracking sites doesn't use radar, they use ADS-B and a network of internet connected receivers.
PhasmaFelis 9y ago
What does the Japanese Self-Defense Force's charter allow in cases like this? Are they allowed to launch attacks on foreign soil in response to immediate threats, or do they need to appeal to the US/allies to do it for them? (Not that there's much they could usefully do to NK, AFAIK, but I'm curious about the principle.)
- titanix2 9y ago
  Not in the current form of the constitution, but this kind of 'trial' will sure be used by the prime minister to push his article 9 reform.
foobarian 9y ago
I wonder if China could just annex NK a la Russia and Crimea, but in this case bring them into the modern age. The world would probably breathe a sigh of relief.
kabdib 9y ago
I'm less worried about NK missiles than I am about a boat with an NK nuke on board, detonated in a harbor. A "smugglers war". I'm assuming the US Coast Guard is all over this kind of threat, but I don't know how hard it is to detect a bomb hidden aboard in some cranny, shielded by multiple layers of inches-thick steel.
- treetoppin 9y ago
  Im not privy to the nitty gritty of the Coast Guard's Maritime Safety ans Security Teams (MSSTs) operations, but finding a nuclear weapon on a vessel is fundamentally a needle in a haystack problem. The best way is going to be intel driven - it is just too easy to hide from a physics standpoint.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  >I'm less worried about NK missiles than I am about a boat with an NK nuke on board, detonated in a harbor How does North Korea benefit from an attack like that? The regime isn't suicidal, every move they make is to strengthen their own position.
  - pcurve 9y ago
    That's assuming it can be traced to NK after detonation.
    - boomboomsubban 9y ago
      What is the benefit in that situation? They know any attack will make the US more hostile, whether they're involved or not.
- fastball 9y ago
  inches-thick steel Lead would probably work better.
branchless 9y ago
First thing on the BBC article: > No effort was made by the Japanese to shoot down the missile, which was launched early in the morning local time, triggering safety warnings. Isn't that odd? Why mention this up front? Why not shoot this down given the warnings to the public indicated it was serious and a threat to life? What tech do Japan use to shoot these down? Is it the same as the Yanks? What happens the moment they try to shoot one down and it sails right by?
- hackeraccount 9y ago
  Seems like you'd be revealing capabilities. That said if I were making decisions in Japan I'd give serious thought to just sending a missile over North Korea into the Yellow Sea.
- ranger207 9y ago
  Most ballistic missile defense (BMD) currently deployed is designed for a shootdown in the terminal phase, ie after the missile has reentered the atmosphere. Destroying a missile in the boost phase, before it leaves the atmosphere, is the best bet, but that requires advanced intelligence of when and where a launch will happen. If I recall correctly, there's currently no good midcourse BMD for when the missile is out of the atmosphere. Aegis has some midcourse capability, but it's for lower and shorter range missiles, I think. That just leaves terminal defense, like THAAD and the Aegis system, and terminal defense is the hardest phase. So there's no real good option to shoot it down, especially if it turns out your interceptor has a low probability of kill (pk). If a missile was actually coming down into Japan, you can be sure that there will be several interceptors on their way. As for tech, Japan mostly uses the same tech as the US, including THAAD, which is a ground-based radar and launcher, the Aegis system with the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) which is a ship-based radar and launcher, and finally the Patriot system of ground-based radar and launcher. However, the Patriot's PAC-2 and -3 missiles are designed for missiles with a shorter range than ICBMs. All of them have data-sharing, so you can use an Aegis radar to track a missile for a THAAD battery to launch. If you try to shoot a North Korean missile and miss, then either morale goes out the window if it was an NK test, or you have to fall back on the next line of defense (Aegis -> THAAD -> Patriot) and hope that it hits. The further the ICBM goes though, the lower pk you have since it's going faster and potentially has better maneuverability.
Fej 9y ago
I'm more worried about Trump escalating than Kim.
emilsedgh 9y ago
Many people are blaming China for the whole NK situation for their "support" and asking for a regime change. What do you propose that China can do after the regime change? Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and great examples that you cannot just throw away a dictatorship. What follows is practically a game of thrones of powers in the region which is a lose-lose situation for everyone, specially people of the "free'd" country and the neighbors.
- DashRattlesnake 9y ago
  > Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya I think it's wrong to compare North Korea to those countries. For one, the post-regime change problems in those countries have been caused by Islamic insurgencies, which is not something I'd expect to happen in NK.
  - fastball 9y ago
    What, because East Asians are incapable of armed insurgency? Are you forgetting the Viet Cong so quickly?
    - DashRattlesnake 9y ago
      They certainly are, but I think it's foolish to think that a regime change would play out the same in NK as it did in countries with very different cultures. I'm skeptical that NK's ideology would be able to sustain an insurgency after too much contact with the outside. Also, the Viet Cong were supported by a state, North Vietnam. They also weren't able to defeat South Vietnam; that took a withdrawal of US support and the actions of the regular North Vietnamese Army.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jtriangle 9y ago
  And recall, you're playing Game of Thrones with nuclear material, so there will likely be no winning that. Best case would likely be China just annexing the whole country and imposing martial law for the next ~30 years. At least people would be more likely to get fed, and the nukes would be safe-ish.
tfcata 9y ago
Kim in the North: winter's coming!

91 points by jlipps 9y ago

This leads to the next thing. Violating Japan's airspace with a missile may be a provocation for war. If that's the case, you're going to hear from our (US) president that we're officially going to war or conflict with North Korea. Unfortunately, in this case, I believe that Bannon is right. (We're screwed in that situation)

imron 9y ago
Whatever else you think of Bannon, he was, and is staunchly anti-war. I'm not sure you can say that about any of Trumos current advisers.
ajross 9y ago
We aren't going to war, at least not intentionally. The downsides of a conflict with a nuclear state, even one with questionable capabilities like the DPRK, vastly outweigh the upsides. And Kim knows this, which is why he feels free to continue to call our bluffs. Trump's inability to bluff (or communicate with precision in general) has really messed things up at this point. I mean, taking his words as spoken he has already threatened to nuke them if they even so much as continue issuing threats. Not only did they up the threat ante within hours of that remark (c.f. "attack the waters around Guam"), they've now put a weapon straight through an ally's airspace. Where do we go from here?
- wisdomdata 9y ago
  NK will not be going to war, unless by miscalculation. Kim knows that of all the scenarios in a war, none end with him munching on caviar in a palace. There are two major powers that would make certain of that. Why do you think he was so keen to assassinate his half brother?
  - maruhan2 9y ago
    This is where I couldn't figure out his motive. He clearly wants to maintain his reign, but if so, why did he start provoking in the first place?
    - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
      The threats are to extract concessions. The nukes are to make them too dangerous to invade.
      - rapind 9y ago
        Some say too dangerous not to invade. It's a complicated situation and there's no easy choice IMO.
    - jonnathanson 9y ago
      Because Kim's reign is predicated on maintaining credibility with his generals. He does that by rattling his saber and extracting economic concessions from the global community in general (and the US in particular). Why he needs to go precisely this far is a good question. Possibly because Trump has consistently misplayed his hand and made a series of stupid bluffs that were quick and easy to call. Kim is probably testing the edges of his geopolitical box, figuring that it's a bit roomier than he'd previously calculated.
      - ams6110 9y ago
        Well he already backed off on his Guam threats. How much credibilty does that gain him with his generals, and how did Trump misplay that exactly?
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- jonnathanson 9y ago
  Where do we go from here? To the very brink, at least if Trump is left to his own (mobile) devices. My guess is he will reroute a CBG or two towards the Korean peninsula and make a lot of bluster about whatever new line he is prepared to draw. Meanwhile, everyone else works frantically on a backchannel plan that allows both Kim and Trump to save some face. I don't see how this happens unless brokered by China, who emerges the big winner on the world stage.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Imagine you're North Korea. Like you give a fuck if the US starts flying things close to your borders. They know that if the US attacks it's game over for South Korea, so unless the US is willing to throw South Korea under the bus the US won't do a damned thing. The US will also have to convince China it was attacked in order to get support. Otherwise China will sit out any conflict, as ugly as it might get. North Korea is really smacking the bear around with a stick here seeing how far they can go before they get bit.
    - helthanatos 9y ago
      North Korea could be completely carpet bombed before they got a middle to South Korea. Why no one is willing to stop North Korea is bewildering.
      - Aharito 9y ago
        Even if we just remove the missile sites, and any sort of nuclear ordinance on the first attack, they don't really have nearly as much as they claim capable of hitting Seoul[1], and even then it can only hit the northern 3rd of the city, which is less populated. The city itself has put a lot of work into infrastructure in preparation, enough bunkers and shelters to house 20 million. Yes, it will get hit, people will die, but as long as no nuke comes down, I'd consider than a win, for eliminating such a dangerous tyrant. Of course, coming to terms with China will be an entirely different matter. 1: https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/mind-the-gap-between-rhetoric-and-reality/ https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/mind-th...
- fao_ 9y ago
  > they've now put a weapon straight through an ally's airspace. Have you studied a map around NK? To get a missile to a target that's free of people in international waters, you have to fly through at least one country's airspace.
  - cattlefarmer 9y ago
    Flying over open water is one thing. The missiles flew straight over populated land.
    - fao_ 9y ago
      Again, there is literally no way for NK to fly the missles to the water WITHOUT going over populated land. Study a map for god's sake.
Koshkin 9y ago
According to Washington Post, the rocket has not entered Japan's airspace, it went into the outer space before coming back to Earth to the east of Hokkaido. (Yes, it did cross the projection of Japan onto the heavens.)

TrainedMonkey 9y ago

This is terrifying in light of watching simulated WW3 this morning this morning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbB0srzLuuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbB0srzLuuo

madads 9y ago

Is there any way an amateur can verify claims of a missile being fired? Does it appear on radar at all? Thinking one of the flight tracking sites. In today's world I'm skeptical to say the least.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago
Certainly NK has every reason to lie, but I can't imagine why Japan would. Open war with NK would be very dangerous for them.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  Not saying they are lying but Abe has been continously playing with the fear of NK to push his military agenda (the change of constitution and surveillance laws).
mLuby 9y ago
No: the missile peaked at 550km (probably about when it was over Japan), so unless a(n un)lucky Japanese civilian in "sparsely populated Hokkaido" was looking toward Pyongyang through a telescope at 6am and tweeted a photo of the missile in boost phase, I'd say you wouldn't even be able to tell what the object was. Furthermore, if you don't trust reports from two nations' militaries, you definitely shouldn't trust anything on the Internet. Hokkaido is beautiful this time of year, just sayin'
0xffff2 9y ago
>In today's world I'm skeptical to say the least. Why? NK has been launching missiles for quite some time now, and this fits reasonably well with their overall pattern of escalation. I don't really pay that much attention to NK, but this launch is utterly unsurprising to me based on my very limited and amateur interest in the subject.
sorenjan 9y ago
The flight tracking sites doesn't use radar, they use ADS-B and a network of internet connected receivers.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

What does the Japanese Self-Defense Force's charter allow in cases like this? Are they allowed to launch attacks on foreign soil in response to immediate threats, or do they need to appeal to the US/allies to do it for them? (Not that there's much they could usefully do to NK, AFAIK, but I'm curious about the principle.)

titanix2 9y ago
Not in the current form of the constitution, but this kind of 'trial' will sure be used by the prime minister to push his article 9 reform.

foobarian 9y ago

I wonder if China could just annex NK a la Russia and Crimea, but in this case bring them into the modern age. The world would probably breathe a sigh of relief.

kabdib 9y ago

I'm less worried about NK missiles than I am about a boat with an NK nuke on board, detonated in a harbor. A "smugglers war". I'm assuming the US Coast Guard is all over this kind of threat, but I don't know how hard it is to detect a bomb hidden aboard in some cranny, shielded by multiple layers of inches-thick steel.

treetoppin 9y ago
Im not privy to the nitty gritty of the Coast Guard's Maritime Safety ans Security Teams (MSSTs) operations, but finding a nuclear weapon on a vessel is fundamentally a needle in a haystack problem. The best way is going to be intel driven - it is just too easy to hide from a physics standpoint.
boomboomsubban 9y ago
>I'm less worried about NK missiles than I am about a boat with an NK nuke on board, detonated in a harbor How does North Korea benefit from an attack like that? The regime isn't suicidal, every move they make is to strengthen their own position.
- pcurve 9y ago
  That's assuming it can be traced to NK after detonation.
  - boomboomsubban 9y ago
    What is the benefit in that situation? They know any attack will make the US more hostile, whether they're involved or not.
fastball 9y ago
inches-thick steel Lead would probably work better.

branchless 9y ago

First thing on the BBC article: > No effort was made by the Japanese to shoot down the missile, which was launched early in the morning local time, triggering safety warnings. Isn't that odd? Why mention this up front? Why not shoot this down given the warnings to the public indicated it was serious and a threat to life? What tech do Japan use to shoot these down? Is it the same as the Yanks? What happens the moment they try to shoot one down and it sails right by?

hackeraccount 9y ago
Seems like you'd be revealing capabilities. That said if I were making decisions in Japan I'd give serious thought to just sending a missile over North Korea into the Yellow Sea.
ranger207 9y ago
Most ballistic missile defense (BMD) currently deployed is designed for a shootdown in the terminal phase, ie after the missile has reentered the atmosphere. Destroying a missile in the boost phase, before it leaves the atmosphere, is the best bet, but that requires advanced intelligence of when and where a launch will happen. If I recall correctly, there's currently no good midcourse BMD for when the missile is out of the atmosphere. Aegis has some midcourse capability, but it's for lower and shorter range missiles, I think. That just leaves terminal defense, like THAAD and the Aegis system, and terminal defense is the hardest phase. So there's no real good option to shoot it down, especially if it turns out your interceptor has a low probability of kill (pk). If a missile was actually coming down into Japan, you can be sure that there will be several interceptors on their way. As for tech, Japan mostly uses the same tech as the US, including THAAD, which is a ground-based radar and launcher, the Aegis system with the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) which is a ship-based radar and launcher, and finally the Patriot system of ground-based radar and launcher. However, the Patriot's PAC-2 and -3 missiles are designed for missiles with a shorter range than ICBMs. All of them have data-sharing, so you can use an Aegis radar to track a missile for a THAAD battery to launch. If you try to shoot a North Korean missile and miss, then either morale goes out the window if it was an NK test, or you have to fall back on the next line of defense (Aegis -> THAAD -> Patriot) and hope that it hits. The further the ICBM goes though, the lower pk you have since it's going faster and potentially has better maneuverability.

Fej 9y ago

I'm more worried about Trump escalating than Kim.

emilsedgh 9y ago

Many people are blaming China for the whole NK situation for their "support" and asking for a regime change. What do you propose that China can do after the regime change? Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and great examples that you cannot just throw away a dictatorship. What follows is practically a game of thrones of powers in the region which is a lose-lose situation for everyone, specially people of the "free'd" country and the neighbors.

DashRattlesnake 9y ago
> Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya I think it's wrong to compare North Korea to those countries. For one, the post-regime change problems in those countries have been caused by Islamic insurgencies, which is not something I'd expect to happen in NK.
- fastball 9y ago
  What, because East Asians are incapable of armed insurgency? Are you forgetting the Viet Cong so quickly?
  - DashRattlesnake 9y ago
    They certainly are, but I think it's foolish to think that a regime change would play out the same in NK as it did in countries with very different cultures. I'm skeptical that NK's ideology would be able to sustain an insurgency after too much contact with the outside. Also, the Viet Cong were supported by a state, North Vietnam. They also weren't able to defeat South Vietnam; that took a withdrawal of US support and the actions of the regular North Vietnamese Army.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jtriangle 9y ago
And recall, you're playing Game of Thrones with nuclear material, so there will likely be no winning that. Best case would likely be China just annexing the whole country and imposing martial law for the next ~30 years. At least people would be more likely to get fed, and the nukes would be safe-ish.

tfcata 9y ago

Kim in the North: winter's coming!