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Credit to Author: Brian Barrett| Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2017 23:46:54 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n After two months <\/span>of relative quiet on the missile launch front, North Korea Tuesday tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that, early estimates show, has a range that could hit anywhere in the continental US. But pay close attention to the caveats.<\/p>\n The test came in the dead of night, a little after 3 am local time, with the missile eventually landing in the Sea of Japan about 600 miles away from the launch site. It took nearly an hour to get there, reaching an altitude of about 4,500 miles.<\/p>\n While North Korea had already tested its first ICBM in July<\/a>, the latest test flew significantly higher and longer. Analysts gauged this summer\u2019s Hwasong-14 missile as having a range of around 4,000 miles\u2014far enough to reach much of Alaska\u2014but Tuesday\u2019s launch quite literally goes much farther.<\/p>\n \u201cIf these numbers are correct, then if flown on a standard trajectory rather than this lofted trajectory, this missile would have a range of more than 13,000 km (8,100 miles),\u201d wrote<\/a> physicist David Wright, co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program. \u201cSuch a missile would have more than enough range to reach Washington, DC, and in fact any part of the continental United States.\u201d<\/p>\n North Korea earlier this year appeared to have gained the ability to miniaturize a nuke<\/a>, a step that, added to ICBM capabilities, makes for a combustible combination. While several other technological pieces still need to fall into place, with Tuesday\u2019s launch, the Hermit Kingdom's military has cleared yet another hurdle in the path of its offensive ambitions.<\/p>\n The progress did not go unnoticed by the administration. President Donald Trump said following the test that the US \u201cwill take care of it,\u201d though did not provide any specifics as to what that might entail. Defense Secretary James Mattis offered a little more depth, noting that the launch \u201cwent higher, frankly, than any previous shot they've taken.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom line is it is a continued effort to build a ballistic missile threat that endangers world peace, regional peace, and certainly the United States,\u201d Mattis added.<\/p>\n But while North Korea\u2019s ICBM progress rightly rings plenty of alarms, in practice it looks less like a significant technological advancement and more like an incremental improvement.<\/p>\n \u201cIt probably was very similar to the missile that they launched twice in July, the Hwasong-14,\u201d Wright tells WIRED. \u201cAt the time, in looking at the second stage, we realized that there were some obvious things they could do to increase the capabilities of the second stage, and my guess is that\u2019s what they did this time.\u201d<\/p>\n 'President Trump may feel he\u2019s got to do something. Whatever that might be could be provocative.'<\/p>\n Philip Coyle, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation<\/p>\n A more significant leap forward would be to increase the size and capability of the engine in the rocket\u2019s second stage\u2014an advance that seemed conspicuously absent in Tuesday\u2019s test. \u201cIt appears they don\u2019t have an engine like that to use, or they would have used it,\u201d Wright says. \u201cIt\u2019s not clear whether they have the capability to either build that or design that in the near term.\u201d<\/p>\n What North Korea can and cannot do technologically remains shrouded in some mystery; there\u2019s always a chance that it simply chose not to show its hand for whatever reason. But even so, there are further important differences between a test missile that could potentially hit the US and actually doing so.<\/p>\n Take the missile\u2019s payload, the weight of which would dramatically affect just how far it could fly.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that their payload is probably quite small, maybe just some diagnostics instruments to help them know what happened,\u201d says Philip Coyle, senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and former head of the Pentagon\u2019s test and evaluation office, about Tuesday\u2019s launch. \u201cBut a real nuclear weapon, especially one that North Korea might have, could be big and heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n That \u201cbig and heavy\u201d doesn't travel as far on the same missile as \u201cquite small\u201d is not the stuff of advanced degrees. While the exact size of North Korea\u2019s potential nuclear payload is unknown, Wright suggests that adding it to a missile like North Korea just tested could shave its range by about a third.<\/p>\n Another persistent technological hurdle: reentry. Coyle notes that in the July ICBM test, North Korea\u2019s reentry vehicle appeared to break up on the way back down. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t designed to take the heat and the shock of reentry into the atmosphere,\u201d says Coyle. \u201cIt looks like as of July 28 they hadn\u2019t solved that problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Setting aside the technological speed bumps, many remain skeptical that North Korea would actually go so far as to launch an ICBM at the United States, given that the reprisal likely would effectively obliterate the country. Instead, experts generally see the ICBM launches as shows of strength designed to prevent US aggression, rather than provoke it.<\/p>\n The question once again becomes what, if anything, the US does in response. Trump had already placed North Korea<\/a> on the list of state-sponsors of terrorism. Sanctions have steadily ratcheted up throughout North Korea\u2019s various nuclear and missile tests this year.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump may feel he\u2019s got to do something. Whatever that might be could be provocative,\u201d says Coyle. \u201cThat\u2019s what I worry about. That this sets off a chain of responses and counter-responses that keeps escalating.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is the real concern from Tuesday\u2019s test: that given Trump\u2019s rhetoric so far<\/a>, there\u2019s only so much room left to escalate.<\/p>\n