Esquire:
Yet again North Korea has threatened total nuclear annihilation of the United States and all allied states. This is pretty predictable. Every single time there is a training exercise, by the South Koreans, the ROK, and the USA, or as in this case the ROK/US/Japan, North Korea blows a verbal gasket. That has been the norm for almost 65 years. It gets a bit hard to take them seriously after more than half a century of such bloviation. But what if something did happen? We need to talk about our defense system.
Ballistic missile defense involves some heavy-duty physics and engineering. Ever since Desert Storm, the United States has been at least nominally capable of some level of defense against this threat, the fact of the matter is that it is still very much an ongoing work. We are trying to hit a bullet with another bullet, often in outer space, at speeds much greater than any bullet has ever actually flown. That takes a lot of work.
