Kim Joing Il isn't making the decisions right now. It is belived the top brass of the N. Korea's people's Army are making most of the decisions, because of Jong Il's deteriorating health. That includes the missile test on Memorial Day. Right now they're trying to downsize the size of their warheads to fit onto rockets. It is clearly an act of aggression. I belive (if I remember correctly) The most recent test was of a nuclear warhead three times the size of that dropped on Hiroshima.
The Russians were reporting that the last detonation was in the 10-20 KT range. The Hiroshima bomb was 15 KT. Of course they are trying to make the devices smaller, but wishing won't make it so and that's a serious technological obstacle that they have to clear.
If this link works, it should show the blast radius of a 15 KT detonation at closest point to Osan AB that I could figure the NKs, and even that is pretty optimistic (well, Optimistic for the NKs anyhow)
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html?ll=126.79939270019531,37.14718209972376&yd=15&z=6Yes, the fallout would carry farther than that, but from a tractical perspective, our forces are trained to deal with much greater NBC attacks, so even if Operations at Osan are slowed, they will not be stopped, and more importantly, the hardware on station will not be effected. If there's another military target that is more exposed than Osan, maybe they can hit that. But without the ability to use the weapon in a tactical manner, it exists only as a strategic threat. One that we know they can't use effectively and so it's pretty worthless. However, it is a signpost that says: "We need to do something sooner rather than later, because once they CAN deploy the damn thing, it will be too late." Its too bad NK is so far away from Israel lol.
-Sik
