north korea could be preparing for a new missile test. u.s. officials say they see continued activity. this comes as the state department is condemning the latest round of north korean missile tests, north korea over the weekend firing four ballistic missiles, three of them landing in the sea of japan. let s go to the pentagon, barbara starr is there with more. tell us about what john mentioned, what they re calling continued activity at these sites. what does this mean? reporter: well, good morning. if you thought the weekend firing of four extended range firing of scud missiles is a problem, we re in for more. u.s. officials are seeing signs of continued activity at the
missile test? pause it is one of those things, we ve been seeing, especially over the last year to 18 months, more and more testing. both on the missile front and on the nuclear capability front from north korea. and it gets to the point where it s hard to determine what the level of threat is, and how serious each given occurrence of this is. i don t think that you ve seen a whole lot of advances on the nuclear front, so i ll counter your statement on that a little bit. but we have seen significant number of launches throughout 2016 of these types of missiles. now, this particular launch went, as you said earlier, about 500 kilometers. that s not much. that s about a little less than average of the type of launches they ve had throughout the year. the map you threw up earlier, too, as we talk about the ranges of the everything from the scud to the musudan to the tie pong d, to the various missiles
well, let me describe the situation in aleppo and perhaps that will help you reach that conclusion. in aleppo, mr. putin has directed his military to conduct a devastating campaign. he s targeted schools, markets. not just assisted the syrians. they ve targeted schools, markets and civilian infrastructure. it s resulted in the death of thousands of civilians. this is not the first time mr. putin is involved in campaigns of this kind. back when he was just appointed prime minister before he was elected. i m sure you re aware of that period of time, there was a series of bombings. and they blamed it on the chechens. and mr. putin personally said he d punish them. he ordered the air force to bomb the chechen capital of grazni. they used scud missiles to hit the main outdoor market packed with shoppers. 137 people died instantly. they used air explosive bombs that ignite and burn the air breathed in by people who are hiding in basements. they used cluster munitions. battlefield weapons g
u.s. spy satellite. the satellite was over the sinai peninsula when flight 9268 went down. the flash may indicate an explosion or onboard fire. or it could just have registered the plane hitting the ground. dr. allen deal is a former ntsb investigator. he s also author of the book air safety investigators using science to save lives one crash at a time. he s joining us via skype from new mexico. thank you for being with us. let s talk about this heat flash for a moment. how could it have been spotted by a u.s. spy satellite? what would that satellite be up there looking for in the first place? they are looking for missile launches either scud type skort-range ballistic missiles, and so on. but typically they can detect any kind of heat source including an explosion or even the impact of the aircraft as it hit the desert obviously we ve seen the pictures of the burned
kind that could see incoming aircraft. if that was in the works, artillery moved closer and some of it on the move. signs of a potential scud missile launch and even more concerning, dozens of north korean warships and submarines putting out to sea. all of this put together pointed along with the rhetoric with the north a real concern and what the pentagon did was take the plan off the shelf and have a look at it and talk to the south koreans about what is going on. perhaps pressure to the south koreans to try and cool things down because nobody would have wanted to see this escalate further. but make no mistake, top commanders looked at the war plan, we are told, and one more time over the weekend reviewed if it had gotten more serious, more of a mobilization, if north korea had done something, what u.s. troops they would have had