North Korea is just getting started on a fleet of more powerful nukes

North Korean state media released images of Kim Jong Un visiting a plant that makes rocket engines for the country's ballistic missile program, and they reveal capabilities and intentions that paint a nightmare scenario for the US.

"Today is a very bad day," George Herbert, an Aerospace consultant and rocket engineering scientist who works with the US's primere North Korean missile analysts wrote in response to the pictures.

To the untrained eye, the pictures of Kim touring the missile plant look like nothing special. Kim beams a broad smile next to a diagram. Kim walks past a big spool of wire-looking things. Kim runs his hand over a big weird block of... something.

But as is often the case in North Korean propaganda images, each shot reveals an important message about the state of the country's notoriously opaque missile development. In the case of this recent batch of photos, North Korea sought to prove the US wrong on all its most wishful thinking.

With its photo gallery on Wednesday, North Korea demonstrated that it's hot on the trail of technologies that can match the US's ability to throw huge nuclear payloads across massive distances.

In the slides below find out what experts are saying about North Korea's new imagery.