Article snippet: Posted at 9:00 pm on August 8, 2017 by streiff My colleague, Joe Cunningham, posted on a report that North Korea has successfully miniaturized a nuclear weapon. This is one of three measurable engineering and manufacturing tasks that North Korea needs to accomplish in order to be able to say it has a nuclear weapon: demonstrate a viable ICBM; demonstrate it can make a nuke small enough to be carried by the ICBM; and demonstrate that the warhead can survive re-entry. Item number one was achieved a couple of weeks ago, while number three failed spectacularly at the same time. Apparently, the Washington Post is working from a draft memo. The DIA, more likely than not, would not produce an assessment that says “The IC assesses” unless it was circulating it for approval/buy-in because the DIA can’t speak for the IC. I don’t know what the DIA is like these days. When I worked with their product they weren’t terribly reliable. This memo seems to be confirming what the North Koreans declared after their last nuclear test in September 2016. This assessment seems to be stronger than that produced by Japan and pending a general buy-in from allies and the entire IC I’d place the assessment in the “definite maybe” classification. Regardless of the accuracy of this memo, as I said in the intro, this is an engineering challenge and a manufacturing challenge. Eventually, the North Koreans will achieve this as well as the survivable re-entry vehicle. Now what? North Korea can... Link to the full article to read more