Pentagon Conducting Urgent Assessment Of North Korean Mobile ICBM Threat

Photo Credit: APThe Pentagon’s Joint Staff is conducting an urgent threat assessment of North Korea’s new road-mobile missile and the danger it poses to the United States.

The classified assessment is being done for Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on an expedited basis, said defense officials familiar with the effort.

“This is an expedited examination of the North Korean ICBM threat specifically for the chairman,” one official said. A Joint Staff spokesman declined to comment on the North Korean ICBM assessment.

Disclosure of the urgent threat assessment from nuclear-armed North Korea comes as President Barack Obama is expected to announce Tuesday night that he plans to cut an additional one-third of the warheads from the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The Pentagon plans to cut its nuclear warheads to 1,550 warheads under the 2010 New START arms treaty with Russia. An additional cut of a third of those warheads would bring the U.S. warhead arsenal to around 1,000.

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