Launching a heavy warhead intercontinental distances would require a far more powerful missile.
Western experts said it weighed about 100 pounds — meaning that the light payload and the modest rocket carrying it bore little resemblance to an intercontinental missile and its heavy warhead.
Under Korolyov's direction, however, the Soviet Union had been building an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with engines designed by Glushko, that was capable of delivering a heavy nuclear warhead to American targets.
They said, however, that North Korea had not yet offered any proof that it had mastered all technical hurdles, including development of a re-entry vehicle needed to deliver a heavy nuclear warhead reliably atop an ICBM, but it was likely that it soon would.
"North Korean submarines are all armed with heavy torpedoes with 200kg warheads," the military source was quoted as saying by Yonhap .It is the military intelligence's assessment that the North attacked with a heavy torpedo.
Interception of separating ballistic missiles is particularly difficult because the sensor has to be able to discriminate countermeasures, light and heavy decoys, from the warheads within a very limited time [1].
A nuclear warhead is heavy and warm, but it would not be too hard to disguise it, cool its outer surface, or even make all the decoys resemble a warhead.
American negotiators have long sought to eliminate those systems, most notably the heavy SS-18 rockets with 10 warheads each.
China's smallest re-entry vehicle is nearly 1,100 pounds, too heavy to permit China to place multiple warheads on its solid-fueled mobile missiles or more than three warheads on its somewhat larger, liquid-fueled silo-based missiles.
"See how heavy it is?" he says, looking at the warhead.
