Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, made waves with his Senate testimony April 28, stating that North Korea "has the ability" to both put a nuclear warhead on a missile and deliver a missile all the way to the United States. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), who had conducted the exchange with Jacoby, then put out a press release that led many observers to conclude that North Korea could therefore hit the United States with a nuclear weapon. This is not the case.
North Korea does not have a missile that can hit the United States. This is a theoretical capability, not an operational one. Nor is there any evidence, at least in open sources or leaked classified ones, that North Korea can make a nuclear warhead small enough to fit on a long-range missile. It is also unknown whether any North Korean missile armed with a nuclear warhead would work effectively. Administration officials have since said that the Admiral misspoke, that there was no change in the intelligence assessment, and that "North Korea is still some years away from being able to put nuclear warheads on long-range missiles." We agree.
In a September 2004 presentation at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, General Eugene Habiger (ret.), former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, gave an insightful technical assessment of the current and future threat posed to the United States by North Korea’s ballistic missile program. The following is an excerpt from General Habiger’s remarks:
"Military requirements are very structured. The threat drives the requirement. As Joe Cirincione points out, there is no serious missile threat to the United States today. And it is very doubtful that the threat will evolve in the near term. We believe that the North Koreans began development of the Taepodong 2 missile system in the early 1990’s. This is the system that got everyone excited about deploying the missile defense system. Well, the missile that was developed during the early ’90’s has never been flight-tested. Never. The Taepodong 1 had its last test flight in August of 1998. That was six years ago. The intercontinental version has never been flight-tested. For the Taepodong 2 to reach the western part of the United States would require some very optimistic operational objectives.
"For example, the warhead would have to be no heavier than 300 kg. Now, there’s a big leap of faith between developing a nuclear device—a weapon that operates in a laboratory kind of environment, in a concrete tunnel, no G-loading, no vibration, no temperature extremes—and to miniaturize something that’s going to go in the nose cone of an ICBM, that is going to experience the kinds of things that I’ve just described. That takes a lot of technology, it takes a lot of work, and it takes a lot of time. I would submit that the miniaturization of a nuclear warhead is probably the most significant challenge that any proliferant would have to face.
"The warheads on the first U.S. ICBMs were in the 4,000-5,000 kg range. That’s the best we could come up with when we first started deploying the Atlas in the ‘50’s. Only after six to eight years of very intensive engineering development and aggressive testing did we get down to 1,000 kg. The leap of faith is that the North Koreans would be able to go from a pristine laboratory weapon to 300 kg. Additionally, the North Koreans are not the world’s best when it comes to guidance systems. Some unclassified data that I recently saw indicated that the Taepodong 2 missile would have an accuracy of 40 km. I do not think many nations would even consider deploying a weapon with that accuracy. So, we have a threat that is based upon a system that has not been flight-tested and with severe challenges."
