Can the U.S. Really Shoot Down North Korean Missiles?

There is a growing fear that’s been brewing lately that, with so much riding on whether or not Kim Jong-un will be launching a nuclear attack at the US or its allies, we will not have the capability to intercept them in flight.

Compelling evidence has been coming forward that suggests that, with all the bravado and assurances from our military leaders and our politicians that we have a crack fighting force of smart weapons capable of ending any chance of a successful strike on the US or its allies by our enemies, we are in actuality far inferior to that assessment.  It is being whispered that the reasons we have not yet shot one of the North Korean test missiles from the sky is that we are simply unable to do so.

According to some analysts, Americans may be overly confident in our military’s ability to shoot down North Korean missiles if the country were to attempt to strike. Maybe the reason we haven’t shot down North Korea’s test missiles is that we can’t. While we all certainly hope that our military would be able to successfully defend the country against incoming missiles, we need to be prepared for any possibility.

According to an article by Joe Cirincione of Defense One, the reason we don’t shoot down North Korea’s missiles when they fire them over Japan is because…

We don’t have the capability.

Joe Cirincione is the president of Ploughshares Fund and the author of several books about nuclear weapons, including Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late.

According to Cirincione, when Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said, “We didn’t intercept it because no damage to Japanese territory was expected,” this was only partially true. It wasn’t a threat, but they didn’t have the capability to shoot it down due to the altitude.

Neither Japan nor the United States could have intercepted the missile. None of the theater ballistic missile defense weapons in existence can reach that high. It is hundreds of kilometers too high for the Aegis interceptors deployed on Navy ships off Japan. Even higher for the THAAD systems in South Korea and Guam. Way too high for the Patriot systems in Japan, which engage largely within the atmosphere.

“All of these are basically designed to hit a missile in the post-mid-course or terminal phase, when it is on its way down, coming more or less straight at the defending system.

Patriot is meant to protect relatively small areas such as ports or air bases; THAAD defends a larger area; the advanced Aegis system theoretically could defend thousands of square kilometers.” [Defense One]

So, if this is true, it would be quite disturbing.  Note that the caveat to all of these is that the missile could only most likely be taken out IF it is coming down “more or less straight at the” missile defense system!

That’s an unsettling thing to consider.  If anyone was around for Operation Desert Storm, you may remember the frequent stories popping up in the news regarding the notoriously bad ratio of kills to misses with the Patriot missile defense systems.  While on some occasions, the interception capabilities were better, by an large, they were abysmal records of success, despite what the military was reporting.  Some interpreted this to be that a very big name was attached to the company that produced the Patriot missile defense systems.  But the facts are the facts.  And this missile system was extremely unreliable.

As for the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system, as explained in the piece, networks employed near Seoul, South Korea, in the western reaches of Alaska, and in Hawaii and Guam, would still be unable to effectively thwart any attack UNTIL IT WAS LITERALLY BEARING DOWN UPON ITS TARGET.

The Aegis Cruisers in the US Navy are highly effective, but their lethality depends so heavily upon whether or not they have a healthy heads-up on when and where the missile has been launched.  If the Aegis ship is too far adrift or if it is heading in another direction, the time window for engaging the target is nearly gone by the time the cruiser is spun around or has closed the distance between itself and the initial launch site.

If we attempted to shoot down a North Korean missile and missed, it would be a major propaganda coup for Kim Jong Un.

When our military practiced this, they managed to shoot down 2 out of 3 missiles.

“A lot of people are putting a great deal of hope in American missile defense systems, but it’s important to note that a couple of weeks ago in a test over the Pacific, our defense system failed. This was subsequent to a previous success.

A medium-range ballistic missile was launched from a test range in Hawaii at 7:20 pm local time, but the interceptor missile fired at sea from USS John Paul Jones, a guided-missile destroyer, missed the target.

“A planned intercept was not achieved,” the statement said. [Fox News]

That’s disconcerting. After the failed test, there was a third test which was successful, but it’s very important to realize that our military isn’t infallible. If our rate is 2 out of 3 missiles shot down, that means that 1 out of 3 still gets through and wreaks destruction.”

So, could we actually shoot down a missile “gift package” as Kim Jong Un creepily calls it?

The unsettling answer is, maybe.

Maybe, if we were expecting it, if the conditions were right, if we were close enough, if it was low enough, if we were in a perfect position.

There are way too many “ifs” in there for me to feel fully confident in our ability to shoot down North Korean missiles before they strike the mainland, which experts now believe they have the ability to reach.

I believe there is some validity to this claim because I have been musing about this ability for a while.  It does seem nearly impossible to be able to act quickly enough to intercept a missile that is already on its way to its target destination.  While a computer could possibly instantaneously calculate where the missile will hit based on its speed and trajectory, that does not guarantee that a missile defense system is in place at that location, nor does it indicate that a missile launch on our part could catch the target in time.

There are too many “ifs” as stated in the article.  The fact is, we will know once we are engaged, but until that time, we are just as up in the air about it as we are about Kim Jong-un’s intentions.

Source:  The Organic Prepper