hydrogen bomb, he doesn t test any of this the way the united states military would, years of development, complex test program. he is firing off missiles as fast by all accounts, as fast as he can. he is getting a fairly good success rate. is it perfect? no. but that may not be what he s looking for. he s looking for leverage and the his image on the world stage. and certainly he has achieved one goal and that s the united states, the president, the united states government is paying allot lot of attention him. i want to bring back colonel frank rincona who s on the line with me here. the other thing that came out this week, colonel, is north korea has continued to up its rhetoric against the u.s. essentially saying recognize us as a nuclear power, there is no
warhead technology. in other words, are closer than ever before to put a miniaturized nuclear warhead on the front end of the intercontinental ballistic missiles. sources cnn talks to regularly say still to be achieved is the challenge for them of being able to launch a missile, bring it back down into the atmosphere, and reach a precise target that they are aiming at. you know, that s looking at the north korean program, perhaps, through western eyes. it s not even clear that kim jung un cares about precision and the targeting. he for them. he wants to have a nuclear program that he can show the world, and insist that he will be and will remain a nuclear power that everyone has to respect. he doesn t test all these things, these warheads, these missiles, these images of a
united states would do to develop this, this is not long term. this is a crash program to get a capability that the rest of the world is going to have to take into consideration and they believe this will provide that deterrent against any military action against north korea. let s bring in global affairs analyst kimberly dozer. this is one of the first serious tests of this white house especially when it comes to the sanctions and the relationship with china. absolutely. and it comes after a number of u.s. officials, including pentagon chief jim mattis has been trying to emphasize the diplomatic options. it s an on-purpose, in-your-face provocation that could put this white house in the frame of mind that it has to do some sort of controlled strike on capability. now that s something that they have discussed, but with some
nuclear test sites literally around the clock for months looking for any possibility that a six nuclear test might happen. officials have been saying they could do a test at any point. you know, it s underground. the u.s. won t know until it happens, but if images are real, if this is an actual constructed hydrogen bomb we are seeing on the screen, it would suggest they ve been able to achieve something that the u.s. certainly has not publicly acknowledged at this point, so it s going to be an intelligence puzzle looking at all the clues, trying to look at the image, trying to see exactly what s real here. it was in recent weeks that i believe we learned that the development of their nuclear program was further along than had initially been predicted in terms of the rate of their ability to achieve some kind of a nuclear bomb and the ability to then put that on put it on a warhead that would go on an
intercontin intercontinental ballistic missile, going from years to months to achieve that in their developmental program. do you think this counts as a surprise to the u.s. officials? well, you know, i m not sure that we know the answer to that. what we may be seeing unveiled here for all we know in the public and the media is something that the intelligence community has been keeping secret. we just we just don t know, but you re right, when you look at the pieces that have been emerging in the program, they have accelerated. that s been confirm. the north koreans have accelerated their missile development program. they have accelerated and it s widely accepted now that they probably have miniaturized