North Korea

so his not going to hit Guam

Nope. The whole thing was, as he said himself, just to 'make the Yankees squirm.' He doesn't want to attack us, he wants to make us scared enough so as to deter us from taking action, because despite popular opinion to the contrary, NK is a rational actor. It's the Madman strategy basically.

make since no one wants to start a nukes war

The Ukrainian missile design office responded to the allegations that the leaked missile tech was from them.

Ugh, it seems like it's been badly machine translated. But TLDR: they deny it and call it groundless.

What else do you expect them or anyone else to say?

*shrug* I honestly don't have enough background to know who's credible in this instance though I remember the article mentioning a Russian intermediary which would not be hard to believe these days.

What they said was that the production of the motors was stopped in 2001, with 227 ever made. They were apparently transported to Russia (along with blueprints and documentation) and have had no information of them since then. The fuel required by the rockets is only made in China and Russia, with NK (as far as we know) having no capability to produce it.

edited 16th Aug '17 12:48:25 AM by TerminusEst

It's highly likely this happened without any involvement from the Russian or Ukrainian governments; Ukraine in particular still has considerable problems with organized crime IIRC.

edited 16th Aug '17 4:19:17 AM by CaptainCapsase

I think it's unlikely in the case of the know-how. The knowledge to build, maintain and design highly specialized military hardware is not something a criminal organization generally has. If NK did do all of the above by itself, they're almost certainly foreign trained.

However, considering how problematic the entire situation is to all countries involved, I think this may have happened a while ago. Lack of foresight on someone's part.

edited 16th Aug '17 4:52:17 AM by TerminusEst

Gideon Rachman: Why US is now dangerous

edited 16th Aug '17 8:06:09 AM by CaptainCapsase

There is no military solution for North Korea from Steve O'Bannon no less.

To top it off S. Korean president Moon Jae-in wants no military action without the South's agreement to it. Commentary from this article also backs up the first one with Mattis and Tillerson pointing out it would be a bad idea. Both have which showed themselves to be the more rational and reasonable members around Trump.

Trump's blustering is so much dangerously incendiary hot air for short.

Some science:

North Korea's producing newer engine missiles, not to mention cancelling an air show due to fuel shortage.

Do you have an an article on the air show being canceled? I need a good laugh.

https://www.nknews.org/2017/08/north-korea-cancels-2017-wonsan-air-show/

Website runs news concerning the DPRK. News broke out on BBC via apps.

North Korea apparently launched a ballistic Missile at Japan..

Current reports are that it overshot its mark.

Overshot or heading further east?

According to telegraph it broke off and fell into the sea after slightly overshooting its mark. Its mark being Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island.

Why pick Hokkaido, though? Don't the Ainu have it rough enough, already? <_<

Did they actually mean to hit Japan or was it yet another show of force?

I'm still waiting for the ancient sea-god Neptune to get pissed off at all these missiles bombarding his ocean, and say: "Release The Kraken!"

It's another show of force, but it's a highly provocative one considering they were until recently firing their missiles up into the air to demonstrate their theoretical range.

edited 28th Aug '17 3:50:19 PM by CaptainCapsase

I can't believe that they would've intended for the missile to actually hit Hokkaido. That would be an act of war, very unambiguously. A stupid and dangerous show of force, like you'd expect from North Korea, would be to deliberately shoot over another country to prove that they can reach there, and then have the missile land in the water. You can frame that as a successful test, albeit an unnecessarily provocative one.

As of now, Abe's convening a meeting in Tokyo on how to respond to this act.