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.
Show this thread
-
4b. Ballistic missile defense attempts to shoot it down, but fails to hit it. Good for DPRK, bad for BMD (e.g. US).
Show this thread
5. Missile fails, warhead destroyed, plutonium dispersed. Bad for DPRK, maybe for others (depends where it fails).
-
-
6. Missile succeeds, but warhead fails/fizzles. Bad for DPRK.
Show this thread -
These accumulated risks are enough that I would think that DPRK would *not* choose to try this.
Show this thread -
There are only a few "good" outcomes here for DPRK, and they'd be hard to judge the probability of occurring versus the others.
Show this thread -
Presumably their military and scientific people are aware of this. If DPRK wants to rattle US, or demonstrate capability, many other ways.
Show this thread -
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.
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
5a. Missile explodes on launchpad, disperses Pu, causes long-term contamination. Very bad for DPRK (and KJU is he is watching in person)
-
Right — this is sort of what I had in mind. Either exploding on launchpad, or in air, or whatever. Bad news all around.
-
Kim's missiles have not been adequately tested, increasing risk of failure. HS-12 has succeeded in 3 of 6 tests. HS-14 tested only twice.
-
Most likely failure is during boost phase, which occured over DPRK territory on prior tests. Does Kim launch from east coast to reduce risk?
-
If technical imperatives dominate, a nuke-missile test of HS-12 does not occur until next year, as it is premature to perform such a test.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.