Important Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday launched a massive exercise of the country’s nuclear forces featuring missile launches in a simulation of a retaliatory strike, as he continued to flex the country’s nuclear muscle amid spiraling tensions with the West over Ukraine.
- Speaking in a video call with military leaders, Putin said that the drills would simulate top officials’ action in using nuclear weapons and include launches of nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles.
- Defense Minister Andrei Belousov reported that the exercise is intended to practice “strategic offensive forces launching a massive nuclear strike in response to a nuclear strike by the enemy.”
- Putin, who has repeatedly brandished the nuclear sword as he seeks to deter the West from ramping up support for Ukraine, emphasized on Tuesday that Russia’s nuclear arsenal remains a “reliable guarantor of the country’s sovereignty and security.”
- Putin noted that Moscow will continue to modernize its nuclear forces, deploying new missiles that have a higher precision, quicker launch times and increased capabilities to overcome missile defenses.
- As part of Tuesday’s drills, the military test-fired a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk launch pad at the Kura testing range on the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Defense Ministry said. The Novomoskovsk and Knyaz Oleg nuclear submarines test-fired ICBMs from the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, while nuclear-capable Tu-95 strategic bombers carried out practice launches of long-range cruise missiles.
- The ministry said that all the missiles reached their designated targets.
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Important Takeaways:
- China said Wednesday that it had successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean, in a rare public test that may raise international concerns as the country builds up its nuclear arsenal at a time of tensions with the United States.
- The Chinese defense ministry said the test was a routine part of the Rocket Force’s annual military training.
- But analysts said this was the first time China had launched an ICBM into international waters since 1980.
- China’s description of the test as routine and annual “seems odd,” Panda said, “given that they don’t do this sort thing either routinely or annually.”
- The Japanese government’s top spokesperson, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said China was rapidly expanding its nuclear and missile arsenal and increasing its defense expenditures without sufficient transparency.
- “These developments in China’s military activities, combined with their lack of transparency, have become a matter of serious concern for Japan and for the international community,” he said.
- ICBMs typically have a range of more than 3,400 miles and are designed to carry nuclear warheads. Analysts say China usually tests long-range missiles over its own land.
- China suspended nuclear arms talks with the U.S. in July to protest U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its territory.
- China’s test on Wednesday comes amid heightened military activity in the Asia-Pacific region, where nuclear-armed North Korea has accelerated its weapons testing since 2022. Last week, North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea for the second time this month.
- North Korea says its weapons tests are in response to intensifying joint military exercises among the U.S., South Korea and others that it sees as a rehearsal for invasion.
- The U.S. also deployed an advanced missile system in the Philippines earlier this year that China sees as a threat.
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Important Takeaways:
- A satellite image analyzed by CBS News shows a large crater and remnants of a possible explosion on a launchpad at Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on Sept. 21. The crater is approximately 200 feet wide, and the site contains dark rubble and other debris indicating a large fire or explosion.
- Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, an arms control and nuclear weapons analysis blog, said an explosion may have occurred during the defueling of the missile as the images indicate the missile may have “exploded in the silo.”
- The Plesetsk Cosmodrome is located roughly 500 miles north of Moscow and 250 miles east of Russia’s border with Finland.
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment in a press briefing on Monday, Sept. 23, about the alleged explosion, saying: “We do not have any information on this matter.”
- The Sarmat is classified as a “heavy” ICBM designed to reach a target about 11,000 miles away and is capable of carrying up to 10 tons in payload, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defense Project.
- According to Russian independent news outlet Sirena, Russia has conducted six failed tests of nuclear weaponry since June, including its Poseidon torpedo and Bulava submarine-launched missile.
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Important Takeaways:
- Nuclear war so devastating survivors will envy the dead: As newly declassified documents reveal what Armageddon would look like – how a lightning attack from North Korea would leave a US President six minutes to decide the fate of the world
- Ballistic missile launches are not uncommon. As a general rule, nuclear-armed nations inform one another of ballistic missile tests, usually via diplomatic back channels, because no one wants to start a nuclear war by accident.
- Even Russia continues to notify the U.S. of its test launches. The exception is North Korea. None of the more than 100 missiles it has test-launched since January 2022 — including nuclear-capable weapons — was announced beforehand.
- 1-5 seconds after launch
- Measurements reveal the missile is not heading into space, as it would be for a satellite launch, or towards the Sea of Japan, as is commonplace in a test. Is this a provocative test or a nuclear attack?
- A vast, world-wide network of U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets begins churning out information.
- In Colorado, combat pilots run towards fighter jets waiting on the Tarmac, ready to take to the air.
- 15 seconds after launch
- The ICBM has travelled far enough for satellite sensors to determine its trajectory more precisely. The outlook is catastrophic: the Monster is travelling towards the continental U.S.
- Two minutes after launch
- Beneath the Pentagon, inside the nuclear command bunker, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff take charge.
- Once ground radars provide secondary confirmation that an attacking missile is on its way to the East Coast, a perilous nuclear warfighting strategy comes to the fore: Launch on Warning.
- This means that once its early-warning systems have warned of an impending attack, the U.S. will not wait to physically absorb a nuclear blow before launching its counterattack.
- Three minutes after launch
- The president now faces an inexorably small decision-making window of time. What must happen next has been rehearsed by everyone in attendance on satellite comms, except, most likely, the president himself. Like almost all U.S. Presidents since John F. Kennedy, he is entirely underinformed about how to wage nuclear war when it happens.
- As Ronald Reagan lamented in his memoirs: ‘Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope and decide whether to release Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason to a time like that?’
- ‘Into the emergency bunker now,’ the special agent in charge shouts at the president. Two members of the Counter Assault Team (CAT) grab him by his armpits. He does not yet fully comprehend all that is going on, or how fast a counterattack must unfold.
- Nine minutes after launch
- At Clear Space Force Station in Alaska, the Long Range Discrimination Radar gets its first sight of the attacking missile as it comes over the horizon. A member of the Air Force picks up the red phone in front of her. ‘This is Clear,’ she reports. ‘Site report is valid. Number of objects is one.’
- Now begins the attempt at interception, a feat ‘akin to shooting a bullet with a bullet’. But nine out of 20 hit-to-kill interceptor tests have failed. This means there is only a 55 per cent chance that the Monster will be shot down before it reaches its target.
- Sure enough, the interception fails. So do three more consecutive attempts. The die is cast.
- 16 minutes after launch
- Satellite sensors have detected the exhaust on a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) which has breached the surface of the Pacific Ocean, 350 miles off the coast of California.
- The dreaded SLBM can strike and hit a target inside the U.S. even faster than an ICBM.
- 21 minutes after launch
- The incoming submarine-launched missile races towards Diablo Canyon Power Plant, a 750-acre facility 85 ft above the Pacific. Diablo is the only nuclear power plant in California that remains active. When a nuclear weapon explodes in the air, the radiation released into the atmosphere will dissipate over time.
- Attacking a nuclear reactor with a nuclear-armed missile is entirely different. It all but guarantees a core reactor meltdown, resulting in a nuclear catastrophe that will last for thousands of years.
- The missile launched from the submarine explodes in Diablo Canyon. The nuclear power plant is consumed in a flash of nuclear light. There is a massive fireball. A facility-destroying blast. A nuclear mushroom cloud and a nuclear core meltdown.
- Known to insiders as The Devil’s Scenario, the worst of the worst-case scenarios has come to pass.
- 23 minutes after launch
- As Marine One takes off, the president is told that a nuclear bomb has hit California. He removes the code card from his wallet and prepares to authorize a counterstrike against North Korea — one involving 82 nuclear warheads. This retaliatory strike will all but guarantee the deaths of millions of people — maybe even tens of millions of people — on the Korean peninsula alone.
- 32 minutes after launch
- The secretary of defense remains focused on getting the Russian President on the line. American ICBMs, launched from a missile field in Wyoming, must travel directly over Russia in order to reach North Korea.
- A motherload of American ICBMs travelling through Russian airspace will almost certainly be interpreted as an incoming attack. Russia needs to be warned.
- 33 minutes after launch
- Hurtling towards the Pentagon, the North Korean ICBM enters Terminal Phase — its last 100 seconds before it detonates.
- In the first fraction of a millisecond after detonation, a flash of light superheats the air to 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, creating a massive fireball that incinerates everything nearby in a holocaust of fire and death.
- Ten seconds pass. The fireball rises three miles up into the air. Those who have survived the initial blast several miles from ground zero get trapped on melting roads and burn alive.
- 42 minutes after launch
- No one has heard from the U.S. president because when the nuclear bomb hit the Pentagon, Marine One experienced a system failure from the electromagnetic pulse and began to crash. The CAT operator tandem-jumped the president out of the open door of the aircraft in an attempt to save his life.
- 43 minutes after launch
- The Russian president is furious. The U.S. president has not reached out to him yet.
- Faced with what he believes are hundreds of nuclear warheads bearing down on Russian soil — launched by the opportunistic Americans in a pre-emptive sneak attack — the Russian president chooses to launch a nuclear counterattack at the United States. One thousand ICBMs are now headed for America.
- 72 minutes after launch
- Across the U.S., Europe, and the Korean peninsula, hundreds of millions of people are dead and dying, while hundreds of military aircraft fly aimlessly in the air until they run out of fuel. The last of the nuclear-armed submarines move stealthily out at sea, patrolling in circles until the crews run out of food.
- In the event of a nuclear war, he said: ‘The survivors will envy the dead.’
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Important Takeaways:
- Japan urged citizens to shelter from what it said was a North Korean missile launch today, issuing an emergency warning for residents in the south of the country.
- The alert covering the Okinawa prefecture has since been lifted as the Japanese government claimed the missile appeared to have flown towards the Pacific Ocean.
- ‘Missile passed. Missile passed. The missile is believed to have passed into the Pacific Ocean around 22:55 (1355 GMT). The call for evacuation is being cancelled,’ the office of prime minister Fumio Kishida said via X, formerly Twitter.
- Seoul’s military said the rocket was believed to be carrying a spy satellite and was launched toward the south, just hours after Japan said it had been notified by North Korea of plans to launch a satellite between Wednesday and December 1.
- It would be North Korea’s third such launch in recent months, following two failed attempts earlier this year.
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- North Korea fires suspected intercontinental ballistic missile
- North Korea has fired multiple missiles, including a failed suspected intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that forced the Japanese government to issue evacuation alerts in the northern and central parts of the country.
- The launches on Thursday are the latest in a series of North Korean weapons tests in recent months that have raised tensions in the region. They come a day after Pyongyang fired more than 20 missiles, the most in a single day, including one that landed off South Korea’s coast for the first time and prompted Seoul to fire air-to ground missiles in response.
- The United States said the launch was a clear breach of UN resolutions.
- “This action underscores the need for all countries to fully implement (North Korea) related UN Security Council resolutions, which are intended to prohibit (North Korea) from acquiring the technologies and materials needed to carry out these destabilizing tests,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- It May Be Too Late to Stop North Korea from Firing Nukes
- The North recently claimed that it flight-tested a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time. The new missiles would be a breakthrough in the country’s efforts to build a harder-to-detect weapon that threatens the continental United States.
- The new solid fuel technology could be an attempt by North Korea to prevent the U.S. from preemptively striking their missiles in the event of a conflict.
- “Militarily, this means that there will be a shorter window within which the U.S. (or other countries) can detect preparations for launch and prepare for a response or even preempt the launch,” said Sharon Ann Squassoni, who held senior non-proliferation positions at the State Department and in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
- The North Koreans “are acting to shore up their so-called nuclear deterrent,” Squassoni, who is now a professor at the George Washington University, told The Daily Beast.
- North Korea’s combination of solid fuel rockets and tactical nuclear missiles might allow what’s known as first-strike capability, said Juscelino Filgueiras Colares, a professor of political science at Case Western Reserve University
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- North Korea Launches ICBM Before South Korea-Japan Summit
- The North’s first ICBM test in a month and third weapons test this week also comes as South Korean and U.S. troops continue joint military exercises that Pyongyang considers a rehearsal to invade.
- The missile flew about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) with a maximum altitude of 6,000 kilometers (3,730 miles) during the 70-minute flight, according to South Korean and Japanese assessments. That’s similar to the flight details from a February launch of another ICBM, which experts said demonstrated a potential range to reach deep into the U.S. mainland.
- The missile fell in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan after being launched on a steep trajectory, apparently to avoid neighboring countries.
- The North’s ongoing aggressive run of weapons tests has been widely expected. Leader Kim Jong Un last week ordered his military to be ready to repel what he called “frantic war preparations moves” by his country’s rivals, referring to large joint drills between the U.S. and South Korea that began Monday.
- The top nuclear envoys of Seoul, Washington and Tokyo discussed the North’s ICBM launch over the phone and agreed to coordinate to elicit a unified international response toward the North’s weapons activities, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry.
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- North Korea Boasts Enough ICBMs to Overwhelm US Air Defense, Media Reports
- North Korea appears to have enough intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to overwhelm US midcourse air defenses on the West Coast
- North Korea rolled 10 to 12 Hwasong-17 ICBMs during a military parade in Pyongyang on Wednesday night to mark 75 years since the establishment of its armed forces
- The nuclear-capable Hwasong-17 is already believed to be able to reach the continental United States. Assuming it can carry four warheads, North Korea could get some of them past the US ground-based midcourse defense system (GMD), which consists of 44 interceptors, the newspaper reported.
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Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
Important Takeaways:
- North Korea aims to have world’s most powerful nuclear force, leader Kim says
- The announcement comes after Kim inspected a test of the country’s largest intercontinental ballistic missile and pledged to counter what he called U.S. nuclear threats
- North Korea’s “ultimate goal is to possess the world’s most powerful strategic force, the absolute force unprecedented in the century”
- Kim said in the order promoting the officers, adding that building up the country’s nuclear capabilities would reliably protect the dignity and sovereignty of the state and the people.
- He described the Hwasong-17 as the “world’s strongest strategic weapon” and said it demonstrated North Korea’s resolve and ability to eventually build the world’s strongest army.
- North Korean scientists have made a “wonderful leap forward in the development of the technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles,” and were expected to expand and strengthen the country’s nuclear deterrent capabilities at an extraordinarily rapid pace, Kim was also quoted as saying.
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