Less than a week after India flexed its nuclear muscles, Pakistan test-fired a new ballistic missile just to let everyone know that its own destructive weapons haven't gone anywhere. Military officials say the Hatf IV Shaheen-1A rocket, which has a range of about 465 miles, was fired into the ocean on Wednesday in a successful test launch.

Last Thursday, India launched a new-long range missile that it claims has a range over 3,000 miles. That test was meant to send a message to the Chinese — since the upgrade means that Indian weapons can now reach every population center in China — but as predicted India's other rival could not let such a show of strength go unchallenged. The two powers already have the capability to wipe each other out, but nuclear brinkmanship requires that you occasionally remind your enemies that you have the power to destroy them too. India, like China before it, says it's not concerned with what the other, smaller country has done.

And just in case you haven't thought about North Korea for a couple hours, military leaders in Pyongyang declared that they have "powerful modern weapons" that could destroy the United States in "a single blow." The Koreans offered no proof for that claim (and given the recent failures of their missile program, there's little reason to believe them), but the North seems increaingly desperate to prove its military might on a global scale. Intelligence observers are on the lookout for a possible nuclear test explosion in the coming days, though there have been do developments on that front since yesterday. Wednesday was "Army Day" in DPRK, which commemorates the founding of the country's military forces and the perfect excuse to brag about how strong you want people to think you are.

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Dashiell Bennett