Why SLBM is game-changer for North Korea where most other recent military stunts were just sabre-rattling. This scares the shit out of everybody

I don't often write about military matters here on the Communities Dominate blog because those issues are covered so well by specialist military websites and tend to be rather far from interests of our readers. I occasionally wade in when I feel I could contribute something, like a few years ago when the noise was getting too loud that somehow USA was becoming weak in its military (when no country in human history has had as big an edge over its nearest military rival as today the USA has, with that gap just growing not shrinking). So I wrote the blog about flat tops ie aircraft carriers.

Today is one of those occasions. We have to talk about the SLBM and why THIS step in North Korea is the most dangerous our little Fearless Leader of Pottsylvania, aka Kim Jong-Un the Supreme Leader of North Pottsyvlania, sorry, North Korea, has achieved since North Korea's first successful atomic bomb test. You the readers will be hearing somewhat 'similar' level of hysteria coming out of the foreign policy correpondents in the coming days about North Korea. Similar to what was said many times in past months with the other recent steps taken by the Nutty Uncle of the North. But this is different.. For that, I hope I can give some clarity. There is a reason why so few countries have SLBMs even among nuclear powers, but why when for example Britain ended its nuclear bomber aircraft fleet (and never built a ground-based ICBM missile force like the USA and the Soviet Union had and have), Britain still operates a fleet of SLBM submarines and is planning to build a new generation of them.

So what is an SLBM. Its a Submarine-launched Ballistic Missile. What is a ballistic missile and how does it differ from most other missiles. A ballistic missile is like a rocket it flies into outer space on a ballistic trajectory (throw a basketball high into air to get it to fly very far, that is a ballistic trajectory) A rifle bullet flies nearly straight (it actually curves also downward on a ballistic trajectory but only a tiny bit on its quick journey to its target). Most airplane-launched missiles fly 'flat' horizontal paths. They may be shot downward, from the airplane to the ground like a tank-busting Hellfire missile or they may be shot upwards like the BUK missile that the Ukrainian rebels used to shoot down the Malaysian airliner. But most missiles fly a relatively straight, flat trajectory with guidance to steer them to their target. A ballistic missile is totally different. It flies literally to space and back, on a massive super-long-range attempt to hit a basketball hoop, a ballistic trajectory that visited space and then drops very very far away, to hit its target. That is what ballistic missiles are like. In World War 2, the Germans invented the buzz-bomb V1 rocket that flew to bomb Britain. It was an early grandfather of the modern cruise missile (it was not guided so they just shot these little rocket airplanes towards Britain and when they ran out of fuel, they dropped from the sky to become a big bomb). But the second V rocket, the V2, that was fired in the last months of the war to Britain, that was the first ballistic rocket. Its engineers like Wernher von Braun best known for designing the early American rocket program, he was actually a Nazi Germany rocket engineer whose first masterpiece was the V2. And then that same technology and German knowhow was used by the Soviets to build their first rockets to go to space, with the Americans shortly following. Its a space rocket technology, not a forward-flying missile technology. That is what gives ballistic missiles their incredibly long range if wanted (modern large nuclear ballistic missiles can hit anywhere on the planet). They also land with incredible force because they come down at a speed of about Mach 5. Even if a nuclear warhead were not to detonate, it would create a crater the size of of the biggest bombs dropped from airplanes. Just the force and speed of the dud-warhead as it hits, coming down from space.

(Am I scaring you yet?)

Now Ludicrous Leader has been pursuing every avenue of a total massive superpower nuclear program. He wants to make his bombs more destructive (going from small bombs of technology similar to those used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs) by attempting a hydrogen bomb, the biggest kind there exists. That test is perceived to have failed. He has pursued the plan to miniaturize his basic atomic bomb design to be small enough to fit a nuclear missile warhead (that may have been what one of his recent tests was about). He has pursued the ballistic rocket program of land-launched traditional balllistic missiles often hiding those developments into his space rocket and satellite project. So far its put objects into space that were not under control, they are now just space debris. So at least in that department, he can't place an intercontinental-range ballistic missile fired from land, to come anywhere near another country's target whether near like Japan or far like the USA, because his satellites are lost with no control. If used in a warhead, that missile would never reach its target (so far, but all countries have countless mishaps early in their space rocket programs and those continue always in rocket science even the Japanese just lost their satellite Hitomi - Hi Tomi - I always wish that satellite could find its way and suddenly talk to us again and say.. Hi Tomi). So many of the recent items were about those tests and developments.

But then there is the submarine launched missile idea. An SLBM. It is yes, a ballistic missile, but it is launched from a submarine. Modern SLBMs are launched while the submarine is under water (earliest SLBMs needed the submarine to come to the surface to launch). So thats the sneaky truly sneaky nastily sneaky part. North Korea has just illustrated its ability to launch a ballistic missile from a submarine - while it is under water. Hidden killer. Now, SLBMs tend to be far smaller than their ground-launched major ballistic missiles so SLBMs typically have had shorter range and smaller warheads (and/or less of them) than the traditional huge 'rocket size' intercontinental ballistic missiles. But SLBMs also have ranges in the many thousands of miles/kilometers. And here's the really nasty part - they don't NEED to fire their missile 8,000 km (5,000 miles) to reach America. A submarine can be sent on its journey for a week or two, come to the California coast, and THEN fire its missile, only a few hundred kilometers/miles and hit its target. And if the intention is to kill civilians in a city, then accuracy is irrelevant. The nuclear missile warhead can explode 5 miles off target and still kill most in the city it was aiming for.

REVENGE WEAPON

The SLBM was the most feared component of the 'nuclear triad' (the national security term that Donald Trump clearly didn't know in the recent Republican debate). Typically strategic nuclear weapons are delivered either by airplane (the original method), or by land-based ballistic missiles, or by submarine-based ballistic missiles. There also are smaller nukes that could be/can be delivered with other methods even by cannon fire or cruise missiles. But they are 'tactical' nukes not intended to destroy whole cities but intended to destroy an enemy army's military units or its military assets like say a bunker or airfield. But back to strategic nukes and the triad, only the Americans, Russians and Chinese have a triad. The French have two legs to their nuclear weapons (submarines and bombers) the British one (submarines). India and Pakistan probably have some land-based intermediate-range missiles with nuke warheads and they both have jets that can carry a nuke bomb but they are not known to operate a submarine based deterrent. Israel has airplanes which can carry atomic bombs and a domestic land-based missile with nuclear warheads and there is gossip that Israel has a cruise missile in its submarines to provide a submarine-based nuke but they don't operate SLBM capable submarines either. So of the world's nuke powers, only five have SLBMs - USA, Russia, China, UK and France. Let me show you the one I caught from an airplane window as I left Hawaii on one of my trips.




Thats a 'boomer' coming home to its port in Honolulu. American SLBM carrying submarine, of the Ohio class. They cost a couple of Billion dollars per boat (a normal 'destroyer' large surface warship by contrast costs only in the several hundreds of millions of dollars each). It is nuclear powered, the largest subs the US navy has ever built, 170m in length (560 feet) displaces 19,000 tons when submerged, has a crew of 155 in total (operated in shifts of 2 complete crews ie the sub needs 77 crew to be fully battle-operational at any hour) and carries 24 Trident missiles. Trident is the latest SLBM of the US Navy's arsenal, has 8 MIRV warheads each, and a range of 7,400 km/4,600 miles. A standard Ohio class submarine patrol lasts 70 days all underwater, the longest mission was 140 days. While the Ohio does have 4 torpedo tubes, under no normal circumstances would these boomers in war be used to attack other ships. Their job is to go hide and stay hidden. They are a revenge weapon.

Why do I say revenge weapon. The SLBM was a cold war response to the threat of nuclear annihilation, a strategic pawn in the delicate chess game of Mutual Assured Destruction (which I really really love, that its formal acronym is indeed MAD. The MAD strategy). Mutual ASSURED destruction was how the two superpowers prevented the OTHER from attacking. If you attack me, no matter what super weapons you have and use, we will both be destroyed - so you cannot win if you attack. Yes, it would kill me too, but I will retaliate and my retaliation is so massive you too will not just die, but be destroyed. Mutual Assured Destruction. And in that strategy the ultimate last card to play, when your country now glows in the dark, is the SLBM on these boomers. Note, France, Russia, China and the UK have roughly this same capacity too. So one Ohio class. What can one submbarine and its active crew of 78 (77 plus the Captain of course) do to my country? Lets count. 24 Tridents times 8 MIRV warheads means.. 192 targets are destroyed. And by destroyed - each suffered an attack 7 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima (Little Boy dropped by B29 Superfortress Enola Gay) or 5 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki (Fat Man dropped by B29 Superfortress Boxcar). Now.. lets put this in context. The 193rd largest city in the USA would be West Valley City, Utah (gosh, I know a LOT of US cities and have visited all 50 states and so many places, even driven all the way through Utah yet I never heard of West Valley City). So yeah, the population threshold would be 135,000 people. More than that, and one single nuke boat with full load of ballistic missiles could destroy anything bigger. ANY city you can think of, Boston, Milwaukee, San Antonio, Tallahassee, San Diego, Seattle, Detroit.. they're all now dust. And the fallout of the radiation clouds would burn everything else so that nothing survives.

(Am I scaring you now?)

One modern major boomer does that to you. Its the real life equivalent to the Star Wars concept of the Death Star. One weapon that can not just destroy a city, one Ohio class submarine can destroy a whole NATION. Its a revenge weapon. It is meant to never be used, but it is there just in case someone tries to bully you into building a fence and paying for it haha. Not us. Nobody will ever win a war with us because the only outcome other than our side winning is that we both die. Thats MAD. Thats Mutually Assured Destruction. Its why the USA and Soviet Union didn't fight each other in a war since World War 2, during the Cold War, but rather fought 'proxy wars'. Because of MAD. They could not dare to start a war directly with each other because of this principal, and in particular, because it was guaranteed by those boomers. Oh, did I mention, the USA has 14 Ohio class subs operating as boomers (another 4 are used in shorter range guided missile submarines which would be used in conventional wars if needed). All of the five navies that operate SSBNs submarines (SS) that are nuclear powers (N) with ballistic missiles (B) hence SSBN - have them as nuke boats which have so much excess power out of their private personal nuclear power plant - imagine having a personal nuke powerplant just for 177 people? Your iPhone would never be out of juice haha except, oops, the submarine hull won't let the signal through, not to mention the approx 200 meters (600 feet) under water that they typically operate in.  And yes, some subs come home then to pick up supplies and rest for the crew but the sub doesn't need to be refueled until the nuke rods need to be replaced on its reactor, so they run for years on the same fuel. They just leave the port, dive, and then go deep and silent, undetected, to wait in case they are needed to destroy another country. Other than that, its almost never that they are called to do anything less strategic like go spying on a rogue nation's business. They lie far away in the oceans and stay deep. They climb to shallow depths at pre-set time intervals to go listen to the special radio that operates moderately deep into water - and I'd guess one Ohio class will always be at this shallow depth just in case of sneak attack - and then they just patrol and wait, like a guarding soldier, not expecting/hoping ever to be needed, but there, just in case. A revenge weapon.

Thats how SLBMs are DEPLOYED today but its not the limit of how they could be used. You could also launch a sneak-attack with SLBMs. This was the fear that grew in the 1970s when the US Navy found that a couple of Soviet SSBN submarines started to patrol very close to US East Coast shores. The flight time typically from land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles is about half an hour to reach the target on the other side of an ocean. But the flight time from a sub a few dozen miles off the coast near Washington DC or New York would only be a few minutes. It freaked them out - in part because Moscow is deeply inland, you can't park an Ohio class boomer in the wheat fields of Smolensk or in the Volga river to be as near to Moscow haha.. The main issue is, whether the sneak attack was intended to 'just' knock out the major civilian cities or to knock out the opponent's main military and in particular nuclear strike bases. The warhead accuracy of SLBMs at that time was not accurate enough to hit a hardened silo in Kansas where an American ICBM Minuteman missile was parked, so this scenario was mainly about possibly Soviets threatening Washington DC and New York and the other cities on the Atlantic, but it still couldn't 'win a war' but it caused great consternation.

Now. Even with that ability to near-instantly obliterate all Eastern cities - Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond etc plus tons more nearby - with just one sub doing a 'Pearl Harbor' type of sneak attack - that was still balanced out by MAD, that ok, it doesn't eliminate the dozen Ohio class subs already patrolling in the world's oceans, who all will retailate and make the Soviet Union instantly obsolete. One side experiences horriffic loss of a quarter of its population dead and another quarter now terminally ill with radiation sickness to die within days, but half of America would survive and nobody in the Soviet Union would come out alive from the next two hours of total bombardment of that nation by all of the revenge weapons. This is how MAD worked. Even if you could sneak up to be horrifyingly close to killing the other side, you still die. Its mutually ASSURED destruction.

That is, assuming that both sides behave RATIONALLY. Now when has our Fearless Leader been rational there over at Pottsylvania? Now this is like giving a loaded gun to a 3 year old. We REALLY cannot expect that kid to always behave rationally and not kill or maim someone with that gun, by accident or in a sudden moment of a childish tantrum. Thats Kim Jong-Un exactly. He's even more childish than Donald Trump. 

THE ATTACK OPTION

The way our SLBM systems have evolved to be so ridiculously expensive is because they were designed to be the ultimate last line of revenge. They evolved to go deeper, stay underwater longer, with missiles of even more range, more capacity in missile tubes, and more warheads of larger yield and more accuracy. The Ohio class boats (submarines are always called boats, never ships) cost 2 Billion dollars each. Its replacement class is the same size but will cost 4 Billion dollars per boat by current estimates. For that specialized use, the boomer designs of all navies have become quite similar in concept, obviously being nuclear powered to allow that very long stay under water (they generate their own clean air from sea water). And boats of this type of cost are luckily way too far beyond the reach of our Fearless Lunatic in North Korea.

But if one wanted to use a ballistic missile subs for ATTACK instead of being the ultimate last line of defense, then it REALLY changes the game. Then you could use a very modest-cost modern-ish but larger attack sub, as a reasonable-price DIESEL sub. Like most subs of most navies in use today. The major navies operate nuclear powered submarines also as 'attack submarines' because the nuke power gives many gains over the far cheaper option of diesel power - to not all nuke subs are 'boomers'. But yeah. Most subs operated by most navies are simpler diesel-engined submarines with also battery operation that can stay underwater for days. They need to come up to get fresh air because diesel engines need air and obviously the humans underwater would eventually suffocate when the oxygen runs out, but ever since late World War 2, the diesel submarines have had snorkel breating devices which means that the submarine does not need to surface fully to recharge its batteries with its diesel engines, it just comes to periscope depth (stays under water but the periscope comes above the waves) and the snorkel is raised which allows air to be taken in without water coming in accidentally.

A World War 2 non-snorkel type of submarine that we see in all the submarine movies had to surface about every day to recharge its batteries and get fresh air. They did that at night. But with the advent of radar, they became vulnerable to be discovered and were hunted of course as we also know from WW2. But with the snorkel, now the sub can stay underwater essentially as long until food and diesel fuel run out, provided nobody notices the periscope type of protrusion out of the sea. Again, do this at night, out not near the shore but far in the ocean, and listen with your hydrophones to make sure no ships are nearby, and voila! You can move being essentially invisible to almost anywhere on the open oceans and not be discovered. Now, there are MANY modern ways to detect subs of any type including magnetometers and infrared and other methods but these are mostly only deployed near the shores or at some specific 'belts' and not universally. Other than occasionally spotting SOME diesel sub (possibly) at a specific location, the only other way to keep track of Uncle Lunatic's new ballistic missile threat - is to start to shadow all his subs, with nuclear powered attack subs. Even that is not in any way as easy as they say in the movies haha.

A current North Korean diesel submarine cannot create much damage. It can fire torpedoes or short-range missiles maybe to destroy another ship. It could have some short-range anti-aircraft missiles onboard and shoot down an airplane or two. But it can't do anything mroe than nuisance harm (while killing dozens like the North Koreans are often apt to do with their Southern neighbor like one of their subs did sink a South Korean warship a few years ago). But a diesel boat with even a few SLBMs onboard - if they had a single warhead each - now suddenly North Korea HAS the ability to go and destroy Los Angeles. And with say 4 missiles installed onto four lanchers on the boat, from one location on the Eastern Pacific they could destroy not just LA but also San Diego and its giant naval base, plus San Francisco and Silicon Valley. All with one diesel sub and 4 SLBMs of modest range and only a single simple warhead of about Nagasaki bomb explosive power yield ie 20 kilotons.

A North Korean diesel sub, with 4 such shortish-range SLBM missiles of only 500 kilometer (320 mile) range could easily from a point 140 kilometers (85 miles) off the shore of California do that destruction. The longer range Kim Jong-Un's SLBM missile can have, the further out the sub can go and hide, until its time comes to attack. And now the cat-and-mouse game becomes a nightmare. An modern Arleigh Burke class US Destroyer with its Aegis radar at about 50 meter (150ft) height from sea level will only see a horizon to 25km (16 miles). It would take something near the total US Navy capability just to patrol the massive sea in the viable launch area to discover the snorkel when it comes up to breathe fresh air. Thats assuming it IS there to begin with. It could of course go patrol first somewhere far out in the Pacific (hide under that horrible patch of filth and discarded plastic waste collecting in the North Pacific). The North Korean sub could get its last fresh air well out of range, then go underwater on its attack and never even come to periscope depth and launched under water once it was inside its radius of the missile attack.

One North Korean diesel boat HAS been fitted with at least one launch tube because they TESTED it (and it worked). Now it is only a matter of time when a boat with at least one launch tube will have a functioning SLBM missile with a nuclear warhead. And likely, the sub will be modified for anything from 4 to 8 launch tubes, I'd guess. The missiles will be relatively short range, considering even the limitations of the submarine itself, so I'd say probably in the 1,000 km range (650 miles) give or take 50%. But this is now a terror weapon. North Korea COULD wipe out Japan. Four or six nuke bombs would not kill 115 million people but one nuke on Tokyo, another on Osaka, and at least two more.. Japan would be on its knees. Or South Korea, obviously. But Kim Jong Nutcase doesn't NEED an SLBM to launch a nuke attack on his Southern border. He has tons of tactical ballistic missiles simliar to the Scud missiles Saddam Hussein used, to fire at South Korea. No, these SLBM's are intended to scare America and Japan. And I betcha NOW they are scared. They were not on Purple day last week but they are now, after this test. North Korea can be now assumed to have at least one operational SLBM boat, and now the panic becomes - how to detect and track them.

And don't think you're safe in Washington DC or New York. If Kim Jong Wacko wanted to attack the USA, he has the time and he can attack any part of it, by just telling his sub crew to sail there. The Germans in World War 2 operated some of their subs sending them all the way to the Pacific, around Africa. Sure it takes a couple of months but they'll get there. It would be even more of a propaganda victory if Kim Jong-Dumb to destroy Washington DC and New York, than for him to destroy Los Angeles and San Francisco. But then.. if that was the plan it only takes two subs and he can do both. Remember now the mission is not to go hide for two months deep underwater silently. Its to go launch a Pearl Harbor style sneak attack on America.

He's done plenty of nutty things and provocations as did his dad and grandfather too. But this is now serious. After the first nuclear bomb test, this is the second big leap for that country to become a real threat to the USA (and Japan). Note, it already was for South Korea. Now. If Kim Jong-Un was stupid enough to actually launch such a surprise nuke attack with even two subs, 12 total missiles, all nuke warheads also detonating successfully, killing 50 million in 6 cities on the East Coast and 6 cities on the West Coast, he'd still die in the next ten minutes as the USA would launch a total retaliatory strike that flattened the highly mountaineous country. But he's a basket case. He is unstable. And he could somehow in his delusions think he can win a nuclear war.

But what about nuclear THREATS. Look at idiot Trump and his tone that he'll bully Mexico to pay for his wall. Ok thats what a childish bully would say. Luckily Trump will never be the US President. Now think about Kim Jong Un, he's an even more childish bully. And he DOES have nukes of modest capability and number - but now suddenly, for the first time, he has the ability to threaten Japan and even the USA. Up to last week the only two countries that were not formally USA allies, who had the technical military capability to attack the USA by nukes was Russia and China. Now suddenly Mad Max has that capability. So lets say Kim Jong Un does some nasty local moves with some disputed islands with South Korea. And Japan objects (with the rest of the big powers) and Kim Jong Un goes and nukes a barren JAPANESE Island somewhere on the coast. Then Kim Jong Un says that Tokyo and Osaka and Fukuoka are next, butt out Japan. Gosh, after a THIRD nuke attack on the nation (and after the nuclear reactor disaster) that could very well force a Japanese Prime Minister to resign and the government to pull out of the coalition against North Korea. Its a scenario by the way, that many in Central Europe, former Eastern Europe countries fear from Putin because it was part of the scenarios that the Soviet Union practised for. An escallation would lead to the Russians/Putin suddenly destroying with a single nuke some not capital city but 'second tier' city of a rival nation like say Gdansk in Poland or Tampere in Finland or Malmo in Sweden or Hamburg in Germany, that kind of attack. Then he'd say, your capital city is next unless you quit this conflict now, to break apart the alliance (in this case NATO or whatever the local European conflict was).

We never had a truly unstable person in charge of nukes before. Or, in case of the North Koreans, in charge of a practical threat via nukes before. The SLBM now changes that. That is why this is a big deal while most of the other North Korean tests and developments were just noise. This is now real. North Korea is in the process of having a first-strike weapon that can hit any coastal city in the USA on either shore, and likely can have its boat or boats patrolling within striking range as early as within some months and definitely by tehe end of next year with at least one launch tube and one missile and one warhead in it for at least 500 km range from the sub to target.

A sad dangerous day for humankind. Now we have to hope for some secret ops assassination of Kim Jong Un by some secret services.

Comments

[tz]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/expert-north-koreas-h-bomb-is-super-emp-weapon/article/2579715

The "small" h-bombs are the right size for an Electromagnetic Pulse weapon, or EMP. If one of those "space junk" satellites is an EMP, it could fry every electronic device below for a thousand miles and kill the electrical grid for at least a year, with 90% of the US population dying of disease or starvation. Water supplies need electricity. So does transport, assuming your car still works.

One or two small bombs. No radiation. And NK is low-tech. One moment the USA or the EU or South Korea, Japan, etc. would join them.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi tz

Good scenario but utterly impractical (as of yet, but not eventually in the future). That needs specific orbital explosion at very precise altitude and exact position. For it to work, our Nutty Uncle needs to get his space junk to start to function. Currently no chance of that happening but once he gets a satellite in orbit to actually start to also talk to earth, then yes, eventually he'd get to the ability to do an EMP attack. With the current tech including SLBM launch, impossible. Its the required position of the re-entry vehicle and its detonation to achieve a practical USA-wide EMP

Russia could do that today as could China. India might get that capability soon. North Korea for an EMP is still far away. Eventually when their space program is stable, then yes.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[cornelius]

I read somewhere that the last SLBM test failed because the missile flew only 30 miles and it was supposed to fly 300 in order to be considered a successful test. So the North Korea is still not there yet. There is still time to kill the Idiotic Leader.

[Catriona]

And a few months ago Tomi mocked me when I said the US was vulnerable to an EMP attack. Not if Kim Jong Un gets his hands on nuclear material and has an SLBM. It doesn't need to be perfect to launch a nationwide EMP. Imagine if he knocked out LA or NYC. It would be chaotic. And even a botched attempt could wreak havoc through the collateral damage.

Of course, Hillary's husband is the one who opened up the North Korean talks in 1994. One of his rare foreign policy missteps. Hillary's entire foreign policy record as Secretary of State was a disaster.

The best hope now isn't a revolt in North Korea. China needs to stop treating North Korea as a useful thorn in the sides of the US, South Korea, and Japan.

[Catriona]

Too bad Trump didn't run in 2012 instead of this year. Romney would likely be the nominee this year, and would likely beat Hillary. He seems more level-headed and less likely to start a useless war than Clinton (who voted for Iraq and also pushed the normally reticent Obama to support the disastrous invasion of Libya).

[Wayne Borean]

@Catriona,

The United States is vulnerable from an EMP attack, and the country most capable of carrying out an EMP attack on the United States is Canada. We wouldn't, but we could.

@Tomi,

I can think of several ways that the launch could have been faked. Yes, the USA did detect a water launch, but was it from a submarine? We don't know.

And if it was from a submarine, did that submarine survive? This is a serious question. If you load four missiles on a submarine, but firing the first one causes the submarine to sink, you have just wasted three missiles.

Even if EVERYTHING went perfectly, there's the issue of range. The longest ranged modern submarine that North Korea has can travel 2,000 kilometres, so yes, they could hit Japan. The longest range old submarine has a range of 14,484 kilometres, but that boat is a Whiskey class, an early Cold War relict, and exactly how sea worthy any of those boats are is unknown.

Converting a Whiskey class, which has a decent range into an SSB would be a nightmare. Building a new SSB would probably be easier, but the basic Sinpo class has a 2,000 kilometre range. Of course they could build in extra diesel fuel tanks, but then you've got to add extra bracing, etc.

If the missile actually was launched from a sub, it was most likely from the Sinpo class boat, of which one has apparently been launched, and which is no more than two years old.

In closing, Diesel-Electric boats usually run on the surface where they have a higher top speed. In a covert operation this would not be possible, reducing the spread to less than five knots, less than 10 kilometres per hour, and probably less than 3 knots (5.5 kph). This severely limits attack ability. Of course they could hide the boat inside a larger ship (ala James Bond).

There are satellite pics of the Sinpo class boat on 38 North.

http://38north.org/2015/01/jbermudez010815/

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi cornelius and Catriona

cornelius - yeah, that was the report from South Korea. If the missile was fired from the sub underwater and it tumbled out of the sky, it would have exploded shortly in air and broken apart. That it was able to fly 30 miles horizontally means it also reached something like 100 miles at least vertically, while it apparently didn't get to its target - thats now refinement but N Korea has illustrated vividly that it can launch ballistic missiles from underwater that will also fly. 30 miles vs 300 miles, I'd put that to 'North Korea tech precision' haha but unfortunately THAT part is the easier part to fix. The launching from under water to keep the rocket flying still after it pops into air, THAT is the hard part.

Catriona - you know I thought of that discussion when I was writing my response to tz haha. No, same with this. You CAN fire a ballistic missile, have it detonate on impact, and it will kill the city that was targeted. Its more difficult to make the detonation hit accurately at the intended altitude for an air burst and THAT part is nowhere in North Korea's control (yet) as I told you before. They can't put a satellite into stable orbit - a far EASIER task than precise detonation on a rapidly falling trajectory of a missile warhead travelling many times the speed of sound. That its an SLBM makes it no less 'solved' because the problem never was the ROCKET to get the warhead to altitude, N Korea has had that for years, its the warhead control while it is up there. THAT problem is the same whether the ballistic missile is launched from land or from sea.

In other words, good try but no go. Its still not viable for N Korea to try an EMP attack. Also if the target area for this SLBM was 300 miles, its not the type of missile to get the warhead anywhere near for a national EMP pulse because that warhead will have a relatively small target window in the upper atmosphere above about Kansas if I recall our last discussion. Ain't gonna get there from the sea on any of the three coasts.

As to Bill Clinton and North Korean negotiations. Yes, and back then the father of this lunatic was in charge, Kim Jong-Il who was at least behaving more rationally than the petulant child haha. What would you have had Bill do if not talk to the enemies to TRY to get them to stop? You are aware that the USA has also negotiated with enemies who could WIPE the USA out, like Nixon who opened the dialogue with China (he was a Republican if I recall) and Reagan who signed an nuclear weapons reduction treaty with the Soviet Union (remind me, wasn't that Reagan dude also a Republican?) Both of those countries had functioning ICBMs not failing experiments, deployed nuclear powered boomers AND long range nuclear bomber aircraft - plus the H-Bomb - none that North Korea even today has, and you think its ok to negotiate with those but not try to get N Korea NOT to get a nuke? Ok, you can of course believe thats a smart way to go.

Trump in 2012 haha yeah he would have been crushed by Romney like he took care of the others too. Trump ONLY succeeded this year because of a remarkable series of coincidences. In 2012 it would not have been 17 rivals, so Trump's modest level of popularity would not have given him the polling lead. In 2012 there was a VERY clear front-runner (Romney) who was not a wimp like Jeb and who wasn't afraid to attack his rivals ruthlessly and immediately. The debates of 2012 were far more feisty from the start, and Trump would have taken far more serious heat from Newt Gingrich, Romney, Rick Santorum etc than the lame early attacks he faced now. So in 2012 he would never have risen to the top, and therefore, he would have then also quit as his original plan was, before Iowa.

But lets say Trump DID run in 2012 - oh, wait, Trump is a smart guy, of course he wasn't dumb enough to try to unseat Obama in 2012 haha.. most smart politians sat out the race like Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal etc.. But yeah, lets say he DID run, then what? He'd have been crushed by Obama.

But for Romney, he would certainly seem more balanced and sensible than Trump or Cruz, I am not so sure whether he'd be stronger in the general election than Kasich. But we tried Romney in 2012 and the 47% video has not been erased from history. Romney would still be a white man who angered the Hispanics with self-deportation (that video has not been erased from history) and he's a gaffe-machine too. If he were to run this year (he could even plausibly become the nominee if the convention is deadlocked through say 10 ballots or more) he'd have the same generic problems of all Republicans (women and Hispanics) but with Romney at least the Hispanic problem would be worse than generic Republican. I think with women he'd probably be about even with generic Republican. So he'd lose the general election not as badly as Cruz but far worse than Kasich, say by 12 to 15 points.

On Hillary 'starting' wars and you quote Iraq and Libya. Sorry, I know how much you hate her. Iraq is NOT ONE IOTA the fault of Hillary, it is 100% the fault of Bush-Cheney. 100% and 0%. She voted for the authorization yes, that is not that she was in any way PUSHING for the war or in any way one of the administration's spokespersons. You can't blame that on her. As to Libya, yeah, I know the Republicans are desperate to pin that on her, and there she definitely was on the inside but that is Obama's NON-invasion (there was no invasion, if you remember, the USA rejected calls to send their troops, insisted the Europeans took the lead, who mostly supported the conflict by air power from aicraft carriers and the nearby NATO land bases). It was some Republicans like war-mongers John McCain and Lindsay Graham who WANTED to send US troops to fight in that civil war in Libya. Obama didn't send an invasion.

If you want to say Benghazi is a 'disaster' as Republicans try, then please also tell me where did you advocate for Reagan to be impeached for the FAR FAR FAR more deadly and stupid mission he sent to Lebanon.. It was the closest thing to Benghazi but about 50 times DEADLIER and a total mess going in, managed on the spot, and coming out.

I will grant you that Hillary seems to be far more 'hawkish' and likely to use military power faster than Obama did. But she is a total DOVE compared to Trump (lets use nukes against ISIS, lets re-introduce torture, lets make it even more torture than waterboarding, lets end NATO, lets give nukes to Japan) or Cruz (lets carpet bomb ISIS, lets send troops on the ground).

If your argument is, that Hillary is too dangerous as a President for being aggressive - then you have to accept that Trump and Cruz are FAR WORSE, Kasich at least as bad, and only Bernie would be another peacenick in the style of Obama. But you do then have to admit, Catriona that you'd be siding with Obama over Hillary haha... I wasn't expecting you to be one of those leftie pinko surrender-monkeys haha... (I am using the term 'surrender-monkey' deliberately, not suggesting you as a monkey obviously but its the favorite way the British like to call the French in any recent war)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Winter]

Tomi

An important aspect of the usefulness of these subs is their (lack of) noise. Silent screw/propeller design is the ultra-super-secret. Anything related to silent propeller design and construction is still restricted like nuclear bomb technology.

The question is now, do the North Koreans have that technology or not.

(Another attack angle, long, long time ago when I was still a student, I was explained by a credible source how it was possible to find an imprint on the surface waves of a travelling deeply immersed submarine. Never found a publication about it. But they use such technology when following submarine land slides)

[cornelius]

@Winter
Very interesting, but what is the range of that thing? If the NK manages to reach a 300 miles range for their missiles, would that technology detect a submarine at that range?

[Winter]

@cornelius
"Very interesting, but what is the range of that thing?"

This can be done using a (doppler) radar on surface waves. IIRC, it could be done using radar from high altitudes/low orbit satelites or using optical measurements on sea surface reflectivity. But this is all old research (1980s, early 1990s)

A three-dimensional analysis of marine radar images for the determination of ocean wave directionality and surface currents
https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/8981

The important fragment is:
"Any deviation from the expected dispersion relationship can be interpreted as being due to a current induced Doppler shift of the wave frequency."

Translation: Water displacement of a submarine traveling at high speed.

Here is an application to finding ship wrecks:
Radar imaging mechanism of underwater wrecks in coastal waters with strong tidal currents
http://eprints.uni-kiel.de/1203/1/838_Hennings_2009_RadarImagingMechanismOfUnderwater_Arttagu_pubid12462.pdf

You can also use radar to study the internal wave wakes of ships (and submarines). Internal waves are the waves "between" water layers in stratified sea water. These internal waves make an imprint on the spectrum of surface waves.

Measurements of the internal wave wake of a ship in a highly stratified sea loch
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/92JC00679/full;jsessionid=7D4AB086D13A4C7F43D3F564B543ABD0.f02t01?wol1URL=/doi/10.1029/92JC00679/full&regionCode=NL&identityKey=346cf6ec-722f-410c-a1e9-b66cb5200691

[Winter]

@cornelius
PS.
For some reason I am unable to find any references to using these techniques in hunting submarines. Sorry for my lack of Google Foo.
;-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi cornelius and Winter

Great stuff. On generic sub-hunting, usually nuke subs are more quiet but not inherently so, you can make a diesel/electric sub also essentially as quiet. Germans and Swedes have been pursuing that direction very effectively for the shallow sea of the Baltic. Russian mini-subs operating in Swedish waters have been a total bitch to spot even after days of echo-sounding and search in truly the shallowest of seas.

For an ocean-going mission, and a modern reasonably robust sub, they'd get under the top layers of the sea, and then they're mostly shielded from the various measures to discover them because the ocean layers form effective barriers to traditional methods to search. The wake on a fast-moving ship or submarine is bigger than on a slow-moving one and if the diesel sub was not in a hurry, was not pursued and 'by itself' it could move at speeds of whales and then the water displacement would be also in terms of size not distinguishable from whales.

On the range yes, even a 300 mile range would allow the sub to be 120 miles from the nearest shore on the West Coast and able to hit any targets from San Francisco to San Diego and inland to Sacremento, Fresno, Bakersfield but not up to Las Vegas or Reno.

On the East Coast because the shoreline is different, the enemy sub could hide in more water, it could be 150 miles off-shore and still reach every city from Boston to Richmond including Virginia Beach and inland as far as Harrisburg PA and Baltimore and Washington DC. Obviously also NYC. Concord, Pittsburgh, Raleigh would be a bit beyond reach but their V 1.1 rocket would probably be 10% better in terms of range and then.. yeah.. it only gets worse with time.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tuomas]

There are a lot of countries with SLMB subs out there. In case a sub launches its missiles, is it possible to identify the country of origin. Do the nukes have some kind of fingerprint that would ensure that the response to the strike would go to the correct address.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Haha hi Tuomas

Nope. None whatsoever that could be determined in any reasonable amount of time.. But any nuke attack on the USA would require an instant total retaliation and arguably nobody would be that foolish to try it except North Korea. If Putin wanted to use nukes against the US, he'd (arguably) do it on a first-strike total annihiliation basis ie try to destroy all US nuclear retaliation weapons AND all the cities (China doesn't have enough nukes yet to even contemplate that). Now, a really nasty conniving nuke power with SLBMs could go near the US shore, do the attack, then go hide, and let N Korea take the blame haha... Someone like Putin could theoretically do that a, to damage the USA and b, to lower the threshold for nuke weapons so he could then use them in Europe. However, I can't imagine Putin for all the bad I think of him, to be that coldblooded to kill 50 million people

But yeah, France and UK won't attack the US or anyone with nukes for that matter unless its the retaliation for someone destroying their country. China would't want their NorthEastern border to glow in the dark; if they wanted to remove Kim Jong-Un, they'd do it at any time, they are the puppet masters with all control over N Korea. They like it that N Korea is destabilizing the West-leaning neighbors who are close to China ie S Korea & Japan.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Catriona]

@Tomi, Hillary is a leftist neo-con. So is John McCain. I don't trust either of them. Kasich is more level-headed than any of them or the rest of the current crop of candidates and unlike any of them has actually acted as an executive in a bi-partisan manner.

Obama didn't want to do anything in Libya. For once he was right. He wouldn't have done anything if not for Hillary and Samantha Power.

[Catriona]

@Tomi, it's not that Putin isn't coldhearted. He's just not that dumb or crazy. He's accomplished most of his military objectives with little effort, and if not for the drop in oil and gas prices (the result of the fracking boom of 2008-2014) would have accomplished much more.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Oh on the satellite detection part..

I forgot the most obvious. There isn't such a satellite constellation yet even deployed in space. The US operates a couple of Keyhole Kennan spy satellites with real time TV and IR and likely some other sensors - they fly around the planet every 90 minutes and won't come back to the same spot until four days later. Thats the nearest thing to the wake-detection etc currently (and not suited for that).

It would require a new whole separate LAYER of geosynch satellites (which stay over the exact spot) and laid into a grid to cover the sea area, to have any chance of submarine detection permanently from the sky. It would need to be a real time satellite and in very rough terms similar in cost to Kennan so past a Billion dollars per satellite per launch (and some launches fail, it is rocket science). Who has that kind of money haha..

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Wayne Borean]

The United States has that kind of money Tomi, if they are willing to spend it.

[virgil]

Also Tomi, I fear that your Trump predictions are way off, your past record in the "political predicions" field is rather spotty and you're doubling down on it :)

By all signs, we already have a Trump-Hillary final, there's nothing that can stop it. And there are plenty of events that could stop HRC from getting the presidency (e.g. the email server scandal/ an indictment would end her presidential race). But even if nothing happens, Trump is actually extremely well positioned to defeat Hillary in a landslide win, fair and square. Read the "clown genius" post made by Scott Adams in August (!) http://blog.dilbert.com/post/126589300371/clown-genius - his prediction record is a lot better than yours, as far as political events are concerned.

(for the record, I'm not too happy that Trump will win the presidency, I think that'll be especially bad for Europe; but he will likely win it anyway, let's not conflate "our wishes" with what's likely to happen)

[cornelius]

More failed tests in NK.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/suspected-mid-range-north-korean-missile-crashes/article29782274/
Luckily for NK the Glorious Leader is in charge and he'll singlehandedly raise NK army to unprecedented new heights.