North Korea claims to have more advanced hydrogen bomb

[applegrove]

BY JULIA MANCHESTER at the Hill

http://thehill.com/policy/international/349007-north-korea-claims-to-have-a-hydrogen-bomb-report

"SNIP.............


North Korean state media said Saturday that Pyongyang had developed a hydrogen bomb that it plans to load onto an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICMB).

The bomb's power, which state media describes as "destructive," can be detonated at higher altitudes and gives the country the ability to produce a large number of nuclear weapons, Reuters reported.

Kim Jung-Un has reportedly inspected the weapon.

The report comes as tensions between North Korea and the U.S. have risen in recent months.

..............SNIP"

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. He is fucking with the idiot in the WH.

If Hillary were in there he wouldnt do this, he would know that he is up against the best.

[Not Ruth]

2. It is almost like he wants a fight

[longship]

3. I call rubbish.

Their nuke bomb tests have mostly been sub-nuke yields.

Building a nuke is not easy. There are just some things which are just not public knowledge, like how to construct an initiator that works, without which the bomb blows itself apart before the chain reaction can get going.

An H bomb is much, much more complex. It has a regular A bomb as a trigger. If that fizzles, no H bomb. Even if the A bomb works, the H bomb will blow itself apart unless one can successfully channel its energy before the fusion part blows itself apart. It's delicate. You get it wrong, even a little bit, it doesn't work.

Then, there's weaponizing the damned things. Blowing up a nuke buried underground is not the same thing as dropping it from an airplane. And that is a far, far cry from strapping it onto a ballistic missile and surviving both the acceleration phase of launch and then re-entry, where G-forces get a bit touchy for delicate instruments. Then, there's the problem of making the gadget small enough to mount on the missile and achieve sub-orbital velocity without it breaking.

The DPRK has a long history of spinning yarns about their military capabilities.

My thinking...

They are blowing steam about their nuke capabilities. They have no weaponized nukes. They may not even have a reliable simple nuke. They certainly do not have a fusion weapon.

[Not Ruth]

5. The ICBM, which NK has, is considered comparable to, if not more complex than a hydrogen bomb

[longship]

7. The Germans in WWII built two successful ballistic missiles.

The V-1 and the V-2, neither one of which were complex.

Apparently some here think a nuclear weapon is an easy thing. No! The ICBM is the easy part. It's just Newton's laws. The guidance systems are a complexity, but there is no evidence whatsoever that the DPRK have solved that problem very well, even when they achieve a successful launch, which is not always.

By comparison, a nuclear weapon requires all sorts of high end physics. One must consider particle interactions, and cross-sections, one needs slow neutrons, not fast ones to get the thing going. And one has to provide a couple of those in the precise sub-millionth of a second that the super criticality is assembled, or the whole assembly blows itself apart without a nuclear detonation.

BTW, a high school student can figure out the path of a ballistic missile using algebra or simple calculus. The mathematics needed for making a nuclear bomb go boom is not for the faint of heart. The engineering is way, way beyond a steerable tube with propellant at one end and a payload at another.

Then, there's the weaponizing of the nuclear bomb. Anybody can bury one in the ground to blow it up. Having one survive a supersonic ride of a ballistic trajectory is yet another very difficult problem. Miniaturizing components make them more likely to break in the several G-force ballistic launch and re-entry.

One figures all of this out by making test launches with the components and then recovering the payloads to see how they faired. The issue here is that no other country is insane enough to allow the DPRK anywhere near where their missiles crashed into the ocean for any such recovery.

That means that they are more or less flying blind with a very uncertain weapon, if it works at all.

Plus, in case anybody hasn't noticed, they lie about their capabilities an awful lot.

And an H bomb is even more complex. A whole new mathematics was invented to figure it out (Teller-Ulam). And the so-called father of the H bomb, Edward Teller's first bombs did not even work. As difficult as an A bomb is, the H bomb is insane crazy complex. Indeed, it includes an A bomb as a trigger. Then, the really mind fucking analysis takes place to get the fusion going, and hopefully sustaining. Ask Teller and Ulam.

An ICBM is the easy part. It's just Isaac Newton. High school stuff.

[Not Ruth]

9. You were saying

[longship]

10. That's what I am saying. Some people were saying something different.

Thanks for your response.

[Locrian]

4. I've heard they built a "doomsday device"...

[longship]

8. Then, we'd better not tell them about Cobalt Thorium G.

Shhhhh!

[greytdemocrat]

6. IF

it was a real H-Bomb, China needs to
get serious with Kimmy up to and
including taking him out.

I'm sure they have assets in place to
do this.