North Korea fires missile over Japan (opens in new tab)

We aren't going to war, at least not intentionally. The downsides of a conflict with a nuclear state, even one with questionable capabilities like the DPRK, vastly outweigh the upsides. And Kim knows this, which is why he feels free to continue to call our bluffs.

Trump's inability to bluff (or communicate with precision in general) has really messed things up at this point. I mean, taking his words as spoken he has already threatened to nuke them if they even so much as continue issuing threats. Not only did they up the threat ante within hours of that remark (c.f. "attack the waters around Guam"), they've now put a weapon straight through an ally's airspace. Where do we go from here?

According to Washington Post, the rocket has not entered Japan's airspace, it went into the outer space before coming back to Earth to the east of Hokkaido. (Yes, it did cross the projection of Japan onto the heavens.)

Whatever else you think of Bannon, he was, and is staunchly anti-war.

I'm not sure you can say that about any of Trumos current advisers.

> Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya

I think it's wrong to compare North Korea to those countries. For one, the post-regime change problems in those countries have been caused by Islamic insurgencies, which is not something I'd expect to happen in NK.

China has clearly shown a capability to govern reluctant populations. I'm not sure why occupied NK would be different.

And recall, you're playing Game of Thrones with nuclear material, so there will likely be no winning that.

Best case would likely be China just annexing the whole country and imposing martial law for the next ~30 years. At least people would be more likely to get fed, and the nukes would be safe-ish.

First of all, if there's a regime change towards democracy, there's no business with China. South Korea will liberate and take care of their emasculated, starved, brutalized relatives in North Korea. Not China, the one that's been supporting the brutalization of all of the people in North Korea.

Most ballistic missile defense (BMD) currently deployed is designed for a shootdown in the terminal phase, ie after the missile has reentered the atmosphere. Destroying a missile in the boost phase, before it leaves the atmosphere, is the best bet, but that requires advanced intelligence of when and where a launch will happen. If I recall correctly, there's currently no good midcourse BMD for when the missile is out of the atmosphere. Aegis has some midcourse capability, but it's for lower and shorter range missiles, I think. That just leaves terminal defense, like THAAD and the Aegis system, and terminal defense is the hardest phase. So there's no real good option to shoot it down, especially if it turns out your interceptor has a low probability of kill (pk). If a missile was actually coming down into Japan, you can be sure that there will be several interceptors on their way.

As for tech, Japan mostly uses the same tech as the US, including THAAD, which is a ground-based radar and launcher, the Aegis system with the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) which is a ship-based radar and launcher, and finally the Patriot system of ground-based radar and launcher. However, the Patriot's PAC-2 and -3 missiles are designed for missiles with a shorter range than ICBMs. All of them have data-sharing, so you can use an Aegis radar to track a missile for a THAAD battery to launch.

If you try to shoot a North Korean missile and miss, then either morale goes out the window if it was an NK test, or you have to fall back on the next line of defense (Aegis -> THAAD -> Patriot) and hope that it hits. The further the ICBM goes though, the lower pk you have since it's going faster and potentially has better maneuverability.

Seems like you'd be revealing capabilities. That said if I were making decisions in Japan I'd give serious thought to just sending a missile over North Korea into the Yellow Sea.

Not in the current form of the constitution, but this kind of 'trial' will sure be used by the prime minister to push his article 9 reform.

No: the missile peaked at 550km (probably about when it was over Japan), so unless a(n un)lucky Japanese civilian in "sparsely populated Hokkaido" was looking toward Pyongyang through a telescope at 6am and tweeted a photo of the missile in boost phase, I'd say you wouldn't even be able to tell what the object was.

Furthermore, if you don't trust reports from two nations' militaries, you definitely shouldn't trust anything on the Internet.

Hokkaido is beautiful this time of year, just sayin'

>In today's world I'm skeptical to say the least.

Why? NK has been launching missiles for quite some time now, and this fits reasonably well with their overall pattern of escalation. I don't really pay that much attention to NK, but this launch is utterly unsurprising to me based on my very limited and amateur interest in the subject.

The flight tracking sites doesn't use radar, they use ADS-B and a network of internet connected receivers.

Certainly NK has every reason to lie, but I can't imagine why Japan would. Open war with NK would be very dangerous for them.

>I'm less worried about NK missiles than I am about a boat with an NK nuke on board, detonated in a harbor

How does North Korea benefit from an attack like that? The regime isn't suicidal, every move they make is to strengthen their own position.

Im not privy to the nitty gritty of the Coast Guard's Maritime Safety ans Security Teams (MSSTs) operations, but finding a nuclear weapon on a vessel is fundamentally a needle in a haystack problem. The best way is going to be intel driven - it is just too easy to hide from a physics standpoint.

  inches-thick steel

Lead would probably work better.