Kim Jong Un hosts dance party to celebrate missile launch

Associated Press  August 25, 2016

PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea marked its “Military First” holiday on Thursday with mass dancing, outdoor concerts and boasts of a successful — and potentially game-changing — submarine-launched ballistic missile test that it hopes will serve as a warning to Washington and Seoul to stop holding joint military exercises that Pyongyang sees as a dress rehearsal for invasion.

Television news broadcasts and the front pages of morning newspapers Thursday showed images of the launch, conducted in the early hours the day before. The test sent a Pukguksong missile soaring from a submerged position off the North’s port city of Sinpo. It flew an estimated 500 kilometers (310 miles) toward the seas around Japan, the longest distance it has yet achieved in a submarine launch.

Kim was shown smiling and hugging officials after watching the test from an observation deck. He was quoted by state media as calling it the “success of all successes,” though it brought immediate condemnation from the United States and the North’s neighbors.

Launching long-range ballistic missiles from submarines is stealthier than land launching. Having that capability could significantly strengthen Pyongyang’s ability to conduct strikes on US positions in South Korea, and possibly on US bases in Japan as well.

Missile-Detecting Blimps Soon To Hover Over D.C.

Within a year, a pair of souped-up $2.7 billion blimps (price includes R&D) will be floated 10,000 feet above the District of Columbia and act as a 340-mile-wide eye in the sky, detecting incoming missiles and the like. 

The design and testing phase for JLENS—the (deep breath) Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, produced by Raytheon, a major weapons manufactuer—is over, relays Program Director Doug Burgess to Popular Mechanics. Now, it is time for implementation. Or, as he puts it, "[We're] getting away from the Ph.D. engineer types running the system to the 20- or 25-year-old soldier running the system."

Click here to see a picture of how very similar blimps were used during WWII to suspend aircraft-fouling barbed wired above London

Added: Rabel does some independent research and finds that the blimps (aerostats) will be tethered: 

It has the ability to maintain persistent surveillance and monitor activity in its area of operations 24/7 for periods of twenty-five (25) days continuously at altitudes of at least 2,500 and up to 5,000 ft AGL with a mobile mooring platform emplaced at elevations of at least 6000ft above sea level (ASL) and climatic conditions characteristic of the CENTCOM AOR.