North Korea muscling into the Nuclear Club bodes ill for the U.S.

October 17, 2006 12:50 am

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THE BULLETIN of the Atomic Scientists "Doomsday Clock" is supposed to depict how close Earth is to nuclear destruction. People of my generation--who can remember crawling under their school desks and the cute little Bert the Turtle "Duck and Cover" song--were much relieved when the bad old Soviet Union fell, and the scientists turned the clock back a bit.

One can expect that the Doomsday Clock has lurched forward since the craziest national leader since Nero has now gone nuclear, with several other, not-so-stable nations in the queue.

North Korea's Kim Jong Il still has his problems, though, if his bomb is supposed to be a viable military weapon and not just a political prop. Chief among these is a delivery system adequate to be a deterrent against the U.S. and other advanced nuclear powers.

Traditionally, nuclear powers have relied on one or more legs of a "triad" (missiles, aircraft, or sub-launched missiles) to deliver nuclear weapons. Kim's missiles do not yet have the throw weight to deliver a heavy payload, nor the accuracy to make smaller payloads viable.

However, Kim and his ideological bunkmates have other, very attractive delivery options available to them.

Well before Sept. 11, in an FLS opinion piece, I predicted that civil aviation would be used as a future strategic weapon. This prediction was based on the penetration of Soviet airspace by a German teenager who landed a tree-hopper airplane on Red Square, and another general aviation incident in Washington, D.C.

The prediction was only incorrect in its scope--I did not think on the grand scale of al-Qaida. In the op-ed, I collectively referred to the new, nontraditional nuclear delivery systems as the "Independently Targetable Old Pickup Truck (ITOPUT)."

Of course, with tens of thousands of cargo containers coming into the U.S. every day via many venues, the ITOPUT is only one of many attractive nontraditional delivery systems. One wag suggested that the best way to smuggle a nuclear device into the U.S. would be to place it in a load of illegal drugs.

With an ITOPUT, Kim or one of his buddies could level a desired target with supreme accuracy, and leave the victim country with the daunting task of determining the source of the bomb and the identity of all parties involved.

Traditional delivery systems leave far more evidence of the launch than ITOPUTs, and those using an ITOPUT may not even have a fixed address.

The attackers would squeal with delight if, by our actions, we took out or alienated one of our oil-rich "allies," thus disrupting oil supplies and destroying Western economies for many years.

I don't have a solution to this mess, and apparently neither does anyone one else. So far, the world's leaders have reacted to Kim's folly with all the wisdom and courage of Bert the Turtle:

"There was a turtle by the name of Bert

And Bert the Turtle was very alert

When danger threatened him he never got hurt

He knew just what to do

He'd duck and cover, duck and cover

He'd hide his head and tail and four little feet

He'd duck and cover!"

BOB SARGEANT of Spotsylvania is a defense expert.