A sales assistant watches TV sets broadcasting a news report on North Korea's nuclear test, in Seoul, January 6, 2016. REUTERS/KIM HONG-JI
Nancy A. Youssef & Shane Harris, Daily Beast: U.S. ‘Tactically Surprised’ by North Korean Nuke
The North Korean nuclear test wasn’t exactly a shock—Kim Jong-Un’s cronies said they had developed an H-Bomb. But U.S. officials were still on the back foot when the Bomb went off.
The U.S. military insisted Wednesday that it was was not surprised “strategically” by North Korea’s test of a nuclear device. But Pentagon and intelligence officials admitted that they were caught off guard by the specific timing of the detonation.
One U.S. defense official told The Daily Beast that the Hermit Kingdom’s test was a “tactical surprise.” But given North Korea’s recent claims that it had developed a powerful hydrogen bomb, officials were expecting some kind of test. (Experts had dismissed the country’s claim last month that it had developed a true “H-bomb,” and the White House on Wednesday said that initial data from monitoring systems in Asia were “not consistent” with what one would expect to see from the powerful device.)
WNU Editor: Regular readers of this blog would not have been surprised .... I did a little digging, and I found these two recent War News Updates posts on reports that North Korea was preparing for a nuclear test ....
Reports: North Korea Preparing For Another Nuclear Test (October 30, 2015)
Is North Korea Preparing For A Nuclear Test? (December 3, 2015)
As for the bigger powers .... North Korea's nuclear sites are probably one of the most watched sites by Western and Japanese/South Korean intelligence agencies and their spy satellites. They probably knew that a test was going to happen .... they just did not know the exact time. This is why I am not surprised by this Russian report .... Eye in the Sky: US Spy Plane Reportedly Monitored N Korea’s H-Bomb Test (Sputnik).