North Korea detonates its first nuke

[Gewehr98]

They're U-1 foils.

They were contract built by Rock-Ola and Seeburg, using the same record changer technology from the jukeboxes of the late 50's and early 60's.  Each U-1 foil has 13 screened filter paper assemblies in an indexable carriage assembly, allowing the mission crew to expose 12 individual 13" special cotton filter papers per each side of the aircraft.  (The 13th screen is actually a purge screen to flush out contaminants in the foil prior to landing) There's a remotely-actuated clamshell door on the front of the foil, and inside the duct portion of the foil is a Geiger-Muller tube that sits directly against whichever filter paper is being exposed.  We expose those filter papers to the airstream anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours, depending on sampling profile and what activity we find accumulating on the papers.  

That's the particulate portion of the collection.  There are also 4 very powerful compressors on board that take engine bleed air and compress it to 3000psi in 30 minutes, loading the whole air sample into 900 cubic inch stainless steel spheres.  We carry 48 or more of those spheres on each sortie, plus the 24 filter papers, so our sampling duration isn't the limiting factor in a mission - it's crew duty day, not to exceed 24 hours.  I've had a few 21 hour-long flights, particularly during Desert Storm, and it ain't a whole lot of fun.  The sound/cold insulation inside the foil assembly and the fuselage can be un-velcro'ed from inside, and that's where I normally put my Mountain Dew cans during transit flights at 35K feet.  In a few minutes, it's ice-cold, but one had better retrieve them before they explode and incur the crew chief's wrath.

A close-up of the right U-1 foil:



Cannoneer, when you're done re-fighting the Civil War to your liking in the other thread, please educate us on how we would keep a horribly unstable and trigger-happy North Korea from running a reactor, extracting the fuel rods, reprocessing those fuel rods for the Plutonium 239 created therein, assembling, and then testing a fission device.  Please be specific on tactics and strategy in waging an overt military operation in China's own back yard without appearing to be expansionist or imperialistic to the rest of the world.  Nor would a covert operation under cover of SEALS go unchallenged once the DPRK figured out what hit them. In case one forgets, real gunboat diplomacy faded away after the Great White Fleet.  If the world body doesn't sanction us to go in and clean house, the best one can hope for is we hire the Mossad to get the job done, then deny any involvement afterwards. Otherwise, it's back to sanctions and smoking/starving them out.   We've got time and we can wait, be it Kim Jong Il, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei, or Fidel Castro.

[CAnnoneer]

when you're done re-fighting the Civil War to your liking in the other thread

Pray elaborate.

Please be specific on tactics and strategy in waging an overt military operation in China's own back yard without appearing to be expansionist or imperialistic to the rest of the world.

It is curious how concerned we are with appearances, almost to the exclusion of everything else, yet everybody hates us anyway no matter what we do. Methinks we should be less concerned with appearances and more concerned with reality. Then useful appearances will naturally follow. Everybody who has been a successful leader understands that.

If it is China's backyard, they should take care of it. If it is not, Kim is up for grabs. If he is up for grabs, all options are on the table - ultimatum, coup d'etat, economic strangulation, assassination, invasion, conventional bombing, nuclear pre-emptive strike. Whatever gets the job done, in order of increasing severity.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

It is curious how concerned we are with appearances, almost to the exclusion of everything else, yet everybody hates us anyway no matter what we do. Methinks we should be less concerned with appearances and more concerned with reality. Then useful appearances will naturally follow. Everybody who has been a successful leader understands that.

If it is China's backyard, they should take care of it. If it is not, Kim is up for grabs. If he is up for grabs, all options are on the table - ultimatum, coup d'etat, economic strangulation, assassination, invasion, conventional bombing, nuclear pre-emptive strike. Whatever gets the job done, in order of increasing severity.

Agreed.  Now that the lunatics running NK can turn entire cities into glass and slag, it behooves us to stop worrying about our reputation and start worrying about our safety (and that of our allies in SK, Japan, The Philippines...).  

Kim Jong Il's temperament leads me to conclude that this is an "us or them" type situation - someday, somehow,  somebody is gonna get nuked.  Better them than us.  The Bush Doctrine/Pre-Emptive Strike Theory is looking mighty appealing right now.

All that guff about respecting sovereign nations and moral equivalence and so forth is a bunch of hot air.  The purpose of the US governemt is to protect the liberties, property, and interests of the American people,  NOT to win some sort of international popularity contest.  

Now that KJI has the bomb, ugliness will ensue one way or another.  Let us hope that our leaders have the courage to do what needs to be done to minimize that ugliness, and failing that, to keep the ugliness as far away from our soil as possible.

[RocketMan]

I was thinking about that, what if NK just set off a heap of conventional explosives to fake it as a bargaining chip?

What if it was a fizzle, and now North Korea is down a few nuclear physicists?  I wonder if the NKs make the family members pay for the bullets?

[Guest]

I wonder what kind of threat is actually posed with a couple of nukes in NK. I mean the worse he could do is lob them at Seol or Japan, but what would they have to gain from that? It would cost them a hell of a lot more than they could ever get. All that is accomplished here is a little saber rattling.

[mtnbkr]

On Drudgereport right now, the "front page" graphic is the puppet from Team America and the caption is "Was it a dud?".

Maybe it's time for the international community to collectively point and laugh at NK.  Maybe China will give them a big wedgie.

Chris

[280plus]

Wait a minute...

Didn't we BAN nuclear weapons?

Doesn't seem to be working. Hmph...imagine that.

[utahminirevolver]

"Kim Jong Il's temperament leads me to conclude that this is an "us or them" type situation - someday, somehow,  somebody is gonna get nuked.  Better them than us.  The Bush Doctrine/Pre-Emptive Strike Theory is looking mighty appealing right now."


Amen.

[ilbob]

I am thoroughly disgusted with our Fearless Leaders. To allow this commie nutcase to get a nuke is a high crime against sanity and our national interests. It would be an even greater crime to allow him to get away with it. The consequences and implications are beyond grim.

keep in mind how this happened in the first place.

a previous administration sold rocket technology to the red chinese in exchange for large campaign contributions.

then they GAVE nuclear technology to NK in exchange for an agreement that every one knew they would not abide by. my guess is it was part of the rocket deal.

there is little you can do to put the genie back in the bottle.

[The Rabbi]

'm stil waiting for LooseCanoneer's response to Gewehr on how he would have prevented all this.  Then I'd like to see how he proposes to cut off all trade with NK without nuking most of the world.

[roo_ster]

there is little you can do to put the genie back in the bottle.

True.  But, you can always kill the genie & the bottle-rubber if it comes down to brass tacks.

I wonder what kind of threat is actually posed with a couple of nukes in NK. I mean the worse he could do is lob them at Seol or Japan, but what would they have to gain from that? It would cost them a hell of a lot more than they could ever get. All that is accomplished here is a little saber rattling.

If the Norks toss a nuke & hit Seoul or Tokyo, get ready for the mother of all depressions.  The, uh, fallout from a nuke tossed at a first world country would be global and severe.  

If KJI decided not to sling nukes at SK or Japan, he can always sell them to flush-with-oil-cash jihadis.

[280plus]

For Sale: One fusion bomb, never used...

Would you take your bomb to MAACO for fresh paint before you put it on the market? Could make all the difference in the sale price.

An this is probably a good time to review the correct response to a nuclear attack:

1. Bend Over
2. Place head firmly between knees
3. Kiss your tookas goodbye.

LOL...

[CAnnoneer]

'm stil waiting for LooseCanoneer's response to Gewehr on how he would have prevented all this.  Then I'd like to see how he proposes to cut off all trade with NK without nuking most of the world.

If he is up for grabs, all options are on the table - ultimatum, coup d'etat, economic strangulation, assassination, invasion, conventional bombing, nuclear pre-emptive strike. Whatever gets the job done, in order of increasing severity.

[richyoung]

+1 again, CAnnoneer...

[280plus]

I find it interesting (I guess) that for every moment of my 49 years I've knowingly lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation. Ever since kindygarten anyways...

But in this case something HAS changed, nowadays we know you should hunker down NEXT to your desk and not underneath it.

[Perd Hapley]

In the nineties, it was UNDER the desk.

[richyoung]

In the nineties, it was UNDER the desk.

...at least for Monica, it was.  Perhaps if El Presidente were paying a bit more attention to his duties, he might not have given NK two reactors and fuel oil in return for a promise that Kim Il Whoever had no intention of keeping....

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

And perhaps our current Fearless Leader could've done something about it as well.  But he didn't.  Our government is consistently a failure.

[mfree]

And once the norks had nuclear reactors, what exactly do you propose we would have done to stop this? Go take them? that would have gone over real well with China, I bet.

Clinton left Bush stuck between a rock and a hard place because Nork had *exactly* what it wanted already.

[richyoung]

And perhaps our current Fearless Leader could've done something about it as well.  But he didn't.  Our government is consistently a failure.

Ok - put up or shut up.  What would YOU have done different, were you Bush II?  AFTER Bill the Rapist, Madeline Half-bright, and "Iranian hostage crisis" Carter GAVE the mad dictator TWO reactors AND nuclear technology?  Please, oh please, enlighten us...what's YOUR master plan?  By the time Clinton had gotten done selling guns to the Injuns, there's litle Bush COULD do to stem the tide.

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

I didn't say I had a master plan.  I said our government has failed us.  We're still putzing around the middle east, while North Korea builds nukes.  Just seems a little backwards to me.

[richyoung]

By imp[lication, that means YOU think it should have done something different, as "failed us" implies choosing a WRONG decision - so what would you have chosen otherwise?  Just HOW did Bush, as opposed to appeasers Clinton, Half-Bright, and Jimmy, decide "wrong"?

[Gewehr98]

It's really more of China's problem, and it behooves us to leverage things so they do the lion's share of the give and take.  Keep the ball in Beijing's court.


As for the kaboom, it's looking more like a fizzle, less than 1/2 Kiloton, so it could be a bunch of explosives in that coal mine tunnel, or the HE package initiated compression without causing a sustained fission of the Pu239, resulting in predetonation and a  small yield.  (Bad tamper design/implementation?)  In other words, the bomb didn't stay together long enough to develop maximum fission yield, for Pu-239 devices the supercritical mass has to be kept together for at least 0.8 µs.

Which means if it was a real fission device, there's a bunch of unburned Pu-239 splattered around in that tunnel that the DPRK will probably want to retrieve and process for another go at it.  Oops!

[.45Guy]

In the run up to the seismic event, there were copious reports of unusual activity at the test site.  Even given the fact that satellite x only passes target area y every z hours, you would think the movement of 550 tons of explosives would be noticed.  Has anyone else considered this?

[Bogie]

That wasn't a nuke... This is a nuke!
 
Seriously, didn't Galveston get hit with worse? Or was it Corpus Christi or Houston, when the big fertilizer ship blew?