North Korea test flew the Hwangson-15 ICBM for the first time in January 2017, which has demonstrated the capability to put a few hundred kilograms essentially

North Korea test flew the Hwangson-15 ICBM for the first time in January 2017, which has demonstrated the capability to put a few hundred kilograms essentially anywhere in the lower 48 United States. So the only possible question about North Korea's ability to hit any point in the lower 48 with a nuke is whether their devices are that small. And the main point of the famed "Disco Ball of Death" picture [1] is that North Korea almost certainly has nuclear weapons that can fit into that size range. So, North Korea, everyone loves to laugh at how backwards they are, but they almost certainly have the ability to put nuclear weapons anywhere into the continental United States- New York, Miami, everywhere. (Also France, the UK, and basically everywhere but parts of South America and the Caribbean.) Because of their conventional inferiority, North Korea has talked openly about how their doctrine is to preempt US and ROK attacks by launching their missiles first- they do not appear to believe that they have a guaranteed second strike between their small size and conventional military problems. The result is that the North Koreans seem to have a number of nuclear weapons and are convinced that their missiles have a large use-it-or-lose-it vulnerability, which is a very unstable situation. (2) China, which has decades more experience with nuclear weapons, missiles, and a much larger and more vibrant economy, is talking about fancy things like FOBS and atmospheric maneuvering reentry vehicles (to guarantee defeat of the US ABM system in Alaska) while at the same time seem to be increasing their missile deployments(3). They don't seem to have a doctrine of 'go nuclear at the first opportunity' like the North Koreans do, and do seem to believe that they can have a guaranteed second strike, which at least brings us back to conventional MAD territory. But that's still pretty scary, we're back to 1964 again. War involving the US with either country would be a very unpleasant day indeed for all of humanity. 1: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/03/21/470976577/why-analysts-arent-laughing-at-these-silly-north-korean-photos https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/03/21/470976577/... 2: As Jeffery Lewis, Arms Control Wonk, likes to point out, South Korea's doctrine also appears to be a preemptive first strike, because the only way they can foresee protecting Seoul- in artillery range of the DMZ- is to wipe out North Korea's command authority first. So North and South Korea are both committed to a doctrine of striking the other first. They can't both be right about that. 3: https://fas.org/publication/china-is-building-a-second-nuclear-missile-silo-field/ https://fas.org/publication/china-is-building-a-second-nucle...