Some of the more interesting parts, high-efficiency engines and guidance systems, are in the upper stages, and those usually fall far out to sea, at high speed into deep water, harder to find than that Malaysian airliner everybody has been looking for all last year.

John Schilling

To engage an ICBM with THAAD would be like asking a high school baseball player to hit a fastball from a major-league pitcher - literally out of his league.

However, it will probably require another year or two of development before this missile can reliably and accurately hit high-value continental U.S. targets, particularly if fired under wartime conditions.

If they want a weapon, they will have to stand down for a year or so to figure out what went right and what went wrong, then come back with another test program at a more realistic pace, if all they want is a propaganda win, they'll probably claim this as a complete success and go home before they have any more embarrassing failures.

That would be several months at a minimum, possibly much longer.

The openness suggests that the underlying strategy is as much diplomatic as military: it is important to Pyongyang not only that they have these capabilities, but that we believe they have these capabilities.

The failed launch, combined with testing from a barge shows that North Korea still has a long way to go to develop this system, an initial operational capability of a North Korean ballistic-missile submarine is not expected before 2020.