Everything that McMaster said is technically true. HOWEVER... as long as any news story or any government official is based upon the following assumption:
“North Korea has claimed”
OK, remember that assume breaks down to: (jack) ass u (and) me. Take that assumption and $1.85 and you can go to Starbucks and get a tall, coffee of the day.
Lemmee splain. The most powerful NK missile, only in theory, could reach about Kansas City, with no payload bigger than a jar of kimchee.
To carry more than kimchee, they need another missile stage added on to provide more fuel in boost.
Their best missiles so far are all “truck” launched. They don’t have a truck big enough for a bigger missile. If they did, a bigger heavier missile would get damaged joyriding around NK.
They would have to go to a silo launch with onsite liquid fueling. That’s what every other nuclear power does that wants nukes delivered.
NK has no silos, if they did we would know. Also, all of their orbital apogee missiles have burned up on re-entry, they don’t have adequate heat shields, yet.
Now, can we all calm down????
Oops, my bad...they could take an existing solid fuel missile, that they have successfully launched from one of their subs...
A missile that already can hold a small nuke, but that has a limited range of about 500 miles.....
Sail said sub to say 500 miles off the coast of LA and let ‘er fly.
Let’s hope we are as good at tracking subs as we say we are....
A while back we had a Sub rise up underneath a line ship. I took a quick look for the incident but didn't see it, guess it was too embarrassing to leave up.
We recently saw a fustercluck off the west coast with old P3 Orions flown in from Canada to find the NK subs rumored to be cruising off LA. Our Boeing P8 converted Boeing 737 antisub planes don’t fly slow and low enough to detect subs reliably.
Which, if you live in Wichita, is fine.
Oh, wait. If it will reach Kansas City, it will reach Wichita. Never mind, I’ll go back to sleep.
.........or, put a small device (nuke) in a innocuous looking ship like a civilian sailboat and sail it right down to Fisherman’s Wharf, or a dock in Manhattan or the Houston Ship Channel and let er rip!
I can’t tell you how many ports I’ve sailed into and nobody ever asked a question. There’s a certain international border (US) I have gone across many times and nobody, but nobody is even there....ever.
Bottom line is the US could probably stop a missile. But, historically we ain’t so hot on sneak attacks.