Honolulu Civil Beat:
The question is a worrisome one: What if the Jan. 13 false ballistic missile alert had been real? Heightened tensions between the U.S. and North Korea — and the heated rhetoric between their leaders Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un — have made the threat of nuclear war seem more plausible to many people.
So, too, has the quickening pace of North Koreas’s nuclear development program. Since taking power in 2011, North Korea’s supreme leader has launched more missiles than his father and grandfather combined.
But what stands between a launched nuclear warhead and the islands, assuming we were the target? In short, it’s a ground-based missile defense.
