Risks include: 1. Missile goes off course, detonates somewhere undesirable (e.g. inhabited). Bad. 2. Test mistaken for attack. Double bad.
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Testing a live nuclear warhead on an actual ballistic missile is risky from many perspectives, which is why US only did it once in Cold War.
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3. Missile and test work as planned, but area is improperly evacuated. Bad. (Cf., Bravo test.)
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4a. Missile gets shot down by people playing with ballistic missile defense. Bad for DPRK.
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4b. Ballistic missile defense attempts to shoot it down, but fails to hit it. Good for DPRK, bad for BMD (e.g. US).
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5. Missile fails, warhead destroyed, plutonium dispersed. Bad for DPRK, maybe for others (depends where it fails).
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6. Missile succeeds, but warhead fails/fizzles. Bad for DPRK.
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These accumulated risks are enough that I would think that DPRK would *not* choose to try this.
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There are only a few "good" outcomes here for DPRK, and they'd be hard to judge the probability of occurring versus the others.
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Presumably their military and scientific people are aware of this. If DPRK wants to rattle US, or demonstrate capability, many other ways.
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But ultimately, it's up to them—so who knows? Nations have been known to take bad risks in the past. Including "sane" nations like USA.
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Alex - US test was Argus, yes?
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Argus was upper-atmospheric test, not a ballistic trajectory. Straight up not as dangerous as hyperbola. US did many straight-up tests.
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Operation Dominic shot Frigate Bird is only ballistic+nuclear test by US.
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MacKenzie has a great discussion of why it was done (meant to quell uncertainty, didn't quite do that) in Inventing Accuracy, as an aside!
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1) The way I read the translation didn't exactly specify missile. The translation *I* read said the next TEST would be on open ocean.
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Which would not be ideal, but would be very different in terms of risks. Preferable, if you have to choose.
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Interesting. Where/when?
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Operation Dominic, Shot Frigate Bird, May 1962. Only live-fire ballistic missile (SLBM) nuclear test by the United States.
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Thank you! Going to read more about this.
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