The U.S. general who oversees America’s nuclear forces said on Thursday he was making the assumption that North Korea did in fact test a hydrogen bomb on Sept. 3, crossing a key threshold in its weapons development efforts.
Although Pyongyang immediately claimed that it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, the United States had previously declined to characterize it.
Air Force General John Hyten, head of the U.S. military’s Strategic Command, however, said he had a responsibility, as a military officer responsible for responding to the test, to assume that it was a hydrogen bomb, based on the size of the blast.
“I’m assuming it was a hydrogen bomb. I have to make that assumption as a military officer,” Hyten told a small group of reporters who were accompanying Defense Secretary Jim Mattie on a trip to Hyten’s headquarters in Nebraska.
“I’m not a nuclear scientist, so I can’t tell you this
