Posted on 04/26/2017 5:08:43 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The top U.S. military officer in the Pacific said Wednesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “clearly in a position to threaten Hawaii today” with a ballistic missile attack and that the Pentagon should consider adding new ballistic missile interceptors and defensive radar there to counter that possibility.
Navy Adm. Harry Harris, the chief of U.S. Pacific Command, told the House Armed Services Committee there are already “sufficient” ballistic missile interceptors protecting the United States at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But he added there is a possibility that not every missile would be stopped in an attack. Hawaii, about 2,500 miles to California’s southwest, could benefit from having new equipment to protect itself, he said.
“I believe that our ballistic missile architecture is sufficient to protect Hawaii today, but it can be overwhelmed,” Harris said. If the United States faced a wave of incoming ballistic missiles, “someone would have to make a decision on which one to take out or not. So that’s a difficult decision.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
They should located them @ Barking Sands, Lanai
Since fat boy doesn’t have an overwhelming number of ICBMs, the missile risk is more about an EMP attack. We’d have to pretty much hit their missile close to its pad and before it got any great altitude. The main risk now for our cities would be a bomb on a ship slipped in.
I believe that Barking Sands is on Kauai, not Lanai.
We don’t already have ballistic missile interceptors in Hawaii???
Hopefully they have defensive systems already. Depending on the speed of butterballs eggheads work on miniaturization, NK subs getting within 600 miles of the islands would be a worry without defense against their shorter range missiles.
How does that old saying go? "Those whose cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." (Santayana)
I agree but the NK threat needs to be taken out. We can’t have a world in which NK has one or two hundred nukes, and that day is coming.
Do you folks really think we can stop an ICBM attack? And certainly not a missile launched offshore with minutes from launch to impact. Where do you think all these ABM systems are, after eight years of Obama? We have very limited systems.
Exactly. If we have them, they damn sure should have already been there. Makes me suspect we might not have reliable ones.
They keep touting the THAAD systems capabilities against the SLBM sub launched systems. Beats doing nothing and just watching them rain down.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/world/asia/north-korea-submarine-missile.html?_r=0
Agreed but the THAAD has to be in range of intercepting the missile and of course it has to be manned and ready to go at a moment’s notice. We don’t have these systems all over the United States. If an adversary places a nuke armed sub off our coast, we have many vulnerabilities.
I believe we have an ABM system in Alaska and maybe one or two other locations. I’m not sure the degree to which Obama degraded that capability but we don’t have coverage of the whole USA against an attack from any location.
Kimmy has exactly ZERO ICBMs, unless China sold him some ... not counting the four fakes displayed in the last parade.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.