It would appear that Kim Jong-un is tired of seeing Russia garner all of the world’s attention when it comes to moving nuclear weapons around. The diminutive dictator held a press conference this week where state media filmed him inspecting a variety of short and long-range missiles. But a smaller item inside the North Korean Nuclear Weapons institute drew the attention of military analysts. Kim claims that his people have perfected a miniaturized nuclear warhead capable of being mounted on its short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and potentially his longer-range missiles as well. The SRBMs are the weapons typically aimed at South Korean and U.S. military facilities in South Korea. If true, this would be an alarming development, further destabilizing the region. (NK News)

North Korea has produced a nuclear warhead capable of being fitted onto smaller short-range missiles targeting South Korean and U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula, according to a state media report Tuesday on leader Kim Jong Un inspecting the warheads.

Kim reportedly called for expanding production of nuclear material in order to manufacture more weapons, as photos showed him next to a warhead named “Hwasan-31” and diagrams of the warhead inside various missiles during the inspection the previous day.

The comments came as part of a flurry of nuclear weapons-related reports in the Rodong Sinmun on Tuesday, including on tests of a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) and a newly announced “underwater nuclear attack drone” in recent days and a special commentary denouncing ongoing U.S.-ROK joint military exercises.

North Korea proved long ago that it had developed the ability to generate a nuclear detonation. But just like the early efforts of the United States back in the 1940s, the country’s first bombs were huge, cumbersome things that weren’t terribly strategic. It’s far more complicated to construct a functional nuclear warhead that fits in a space not much larger than a steamer trunk. If that is what was being displayed in the photos released this week, the North’s capabilities have truly ramped up.

That remains a big “if,” but the general consensus seems to be that Kim’s technicians have pulled it off. One nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told reporters that they believe North Korea had warheads small enough to fit on their SRBMs as early as 2017 or 2018. And if an anticipated weapons test takes place in the coming weeks, it will likely mean that they are now producing nuclear warheads than can be mounted on virtually all of their ICBMs.

Complicating matters further, North Korea also announced successful tests of their new underwater “attack drone.” They claim that the unmanned vehicle can also be fitted with nuclear warheads and it recently traveled hundreds of kilometers over a period of more than forty hours. The Institute for Science and International Security believes that the claim may be somewhat overstated. Based on the size of the drone in the photographs, they feel that the best the underwater drone could manage would be one of the smallest warheads, probably in the 10-kiloton range. Then again, when it comes to nuclear weapons, relative size isn’t all that comforting.

The bottom line question (as always) is whether or not Kim is actually crazy enough to conduct a first strike with a nuke. Is he really crazy or does he just want the world to believe he’s crazy enough to do it? The CIA continues to believe that he is cruel and dangerous, but he’s not insane, and should not be “written off as a madman.” I suppose that’s somewhat comforting, but we’ve got enough on our plate at the moment without having to worry about this little toad sending up mushroom clouds.

One other note in passing involves Kim himself. If you take a look at some of the pictures from this release, Kim Jong-un just looks bad. He appears out of shape and just generally unhealthy. And that’s after his handlers no doubt prepped him for prime time. If and when his time runs out, the question of succession could make North Korea even more of a chaotic mess, further destabilizing the peninsula.