Stealing Their Thunder.

When I heard on the radio this morning that North Korea tested another nuclear weapon I jokingly wondered if they did so because of Pope Benedict resigning.  After all that story dominated much of the international news yesterday, and North Korea loves to be the centre of attention.  It's also a reasonable guess that the Roman Catholic Church is yet another of the numerous groups on North Korea's official "We hate these guys!" list.

More seriously no one is happy about this.  Even China, the closest thing North Korea has to an ally, is not amused.  It's a reasonable guess that North Korea has a ways to go to build a deliverable nuclear weapon.  But if they keep this up it will happen, and it may encourage other states in the region to consider their own nukes.  Japan for example could probably build a deliverable nuke fairly quickly, and adapting its space launch rockets into ballistic missiles wouldn't be hard for them either.

Up From The Depths.

We've all heard the cliched phrases: The Silent Service. Run silent, run deep. But the reality is that every year or two an incident involving one of the submarines of the world's navies will make the news. The latest such incident is a "one in a million" collision between the HMS Vanguard of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, and the French Navy's Le Triomphant earlier this month. Both boats survived, but the Vanguard had to be towed back to port. What is sure to keep this story in the news a bit longer than some other collisions is that both boats were SSBNs, nuclear subs carrying nuclear armed ballistic missiles. These subs play the same role in the British and French navies as they do in those of the United States and Russia, the ultimate deterent against nuclear attack. Both subs carry a compliment of 16 submarine launched ballistic missiles, American made D5 Tridents on the Vanguard, French made M45s on Le Triomphant.

It's sobering to consider the destructive power a single one of these vessels carries. It's unclear how many warheads either sub carries on each of its missiles these days, but 3 is the general assumption for Vanguard. Therefore 6 missiles would be sufficient to hit every city in Canada with a population of 100 thousand people or more. And it is this firepower that is the rationale behind these subs, for it sends the message to any potential nuclear armed foe that any nuclear attack will result in the destruction of their country from a source they would be unable to detect in time to prevent retaliation, should they even have the capability to do so. Both nations keep one of these vessels at sea at all times.

SSBN's are designed to be as hard to detect as is practical, and this quite obviously played a role in the collision. Neither boat heard each other, and of course neither was supposed to know where the other was. The exact patrol routes for such subs are closely guarded secrets, since enemies not knowing where to hunt for them is part of their operational goal. So any sort of calls for somehow coordinating operations to prevent such a collision are likely to be ignored.

The North Korean Bomb.

Pretty much everyone believes that North Korea did actually detonate an atomic device over the weekend. The obvious question is whether it's a weaponised device. In other words do the North Koreans actually have something that can be stuck on the end of a missile or dropped from a plane. It's one thing to make something that will blow up in a test chamber, it's quite another to make something that will blow up on demand after sitting around for months and can be transported by something other than a cargo ship.

Beijing has condemned the test, which is no surprise. North Korea's action has threatened regional stability, including increasing the possibility that Japan and/or South Korea may embark on nuclear programs of their own. The last thing the Chinese need is more military competition, as they already have enough trouble figuring out how to deal with the US advantages in technology. Japan taking a more aggressive stance on the use of military force would complicate matters greatly. The North Koreans may live to regret the effects this has on their relationship with China, which is the closest thing they have to a patron. Chinese aid to North Korea is substantial, and reductions in that aid will effect all areas of North Korean society.

Oddly enough one of the big losers as a result of the test may be Iran. The North Korean test is sure to bolster the position of those in the Bush administration who favour military action to stop Iran building a nuclear device, either directly or via support of possible Israeli action against Iranian nuclear sites. Unlike North Korea the Iranians are not in a position to directly militarily threaten US allies and interests. Backing the current insurgency in Iraq is another matter.