Computer models can help, but they have proved to be wrong again, and again, and again. Speculating about guidance platforms, warhead type of weight, the size of the booster, and other technical factors is guesswork -- not fact.

Rushing out to print maps with worst-case maximum ranges -- rather than showing the uncertainty involved -- is irresponsible journalism. This is particularly true when some analyst outside the intelligence community rounds up to a scare figure, and it is suddenly taken as fact. Reality is littered with the wrong guesses of retired "experts," intelligence officers, and military officers who grabbed 15 seconds of fame without a single hard fact.

Hopefully, the U.S. government will, in time, provide declassified hard intelligence on North Korea's missile test.

It may not have gotten any telemetry (and it would be silly to state it can break any coded data), but the booster size is something North Korea knows the United States can probably get with great accuracy with imagery, and reporting on the missile's structure and possible performance characteristic based on its size and shape before it blew up, in broad terms, would not give away any intelligence sources or means.

At this point, however, it seems very doubtful that North Korea is close to a real world capability to attack the United States. It has had two possible tests of a large booster for such a missile: One in 1998 and one on the Fourth of July this year. Both failed dismally.

There is no officially announced intelligence data indicating that North Korea has advanced long-range guidance platforms, or warhead design. It may well have part of a Chinese design for a relatively light implosion fission nuclear weapon that could be carried on a missile, but no official source has indicated that it has anything like the design detail to actually build such a warhead without testing on a level intelligence would probably detect.

Even in a worst case, such a warhead would probably approach 700-1,000 kilograms or 1,540-2,200 pounds, and be a comparatively low yield fission - not a boosted or thermonuclear weapon.

There has been some very good technical reporting and speculation on the possible nature of the "No Dong" and "Taepo Dong" missiles from Global Security and the Federation of American Scientists, and some limited reporting from U.S. defense sources.

It is vital to understand that such speculation describes missiles that are undergoing constant modifications and often parallel developments of different missiles and configurations. What might have been true at one time may not be true now, and the best speculation in the world is still ultimately guesswork.

The data available, however, strongly indicate that North Korea is still focusing on getting missiles that can attack targets anywhere North Korean needs to hit in Asia -- with the possible exception of Guam -- and not the United States.

The limited technical data available on the No Dong series to date do not indicate that it can hit any meaningful target in the US with a nuclear weapon or any other meaningful payload.

There are all kinds of guesses about the boosters for what is being called the Taepo Dong 2 -- a missile that simply does not exist as a finished configuration. All of the ones displayed to date present complex size problems and are smaller than the Russian or Chinese boosters that became ICBMS at similar stages of missile development.

It would probably take a larger diameter booster than North Korea ever displayed before July 4 to play such a role, and real questions exist about stacking or clustering such boosters to get predictable and reliable results at the ranges involved.

There is absolutely no meaningful agreement about what the more limited range of such missiles would be. The Washington Post, for example, quotes a possible range of 2,175 to 2,672 miles in its July 5 edition. Other sources quote maximum ranges of 2,100, 2,400, and 3,000 miles.

All are sheer guesswork, and all ignore the fact that missiles do not have maximum ranges; they have range-payloads. If you do not know -- or at least state your assumption about -- the weight of the warhead or payload, your guesses are undefined and irresponsible rubbish.

Accordingly, until better data are available, the main risk seems to be that North Korean is beginning early testing of a missile that could throw the equivalent of a rock at Alaska.

Even in the worst case, it would be able to launch a small fission nuclear weapon with great inaccuracy and unreliability at Alaska, and just possibly Hawaii or the upper northwest corner of the United States. Given its history of testing to date, it is probably around five years away from even this operational capability, although shorter times are all possible.

This is not in the "so what?" category. However, it would be suicidally stupid to launch such a missile at low value targets in Alaska or area targets in a small part of the United States. U.S. retaliation at a devastating level would be both justified and nearly certain. North Korea would effectively cease to exist as an organized state.

For a dictatorship whose only real ideology is the survival of the leader, this does not seem a credible option.

This does not mean that North Korea is not working on ICBMs, does not have larger boosters in development, will not get much more advanced nuclear weapons in development, or cannot conceal a great deal.

It does mean that the United States has good reason to try to halt North Korean efforts and no reason to overreact or panic, particularly since applying worst case wild guesses to two conspicuous design failures is not simply ridiculous, it is childish.

(Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair of strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. This article is extracted from his new CSIS paper "North Korea's Missile Tests: Saber Rattling or Rocket's Red Glare?")

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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