As I posted on another EMP thread, “The EMP Threat seems to come up every three or four months. Must be important for us to know, to get such regular reminders.”
You’d need absolutely reliable thermonuke bombs ( a 50 kT bomb is not big enough) plus a reliable missile system that can land a nuke at the right place at the right time, and the entire setup from construction of the launch pad up to the detonation would need to be stealthy and secret.
If our radars/sats detected an incoming from a threat country, what do you suppose the response would be? I mean after we launch THAAD, SM Block II, and EKV?
“...what do you suppose the response would be?”
You know, I’m sure that the 250 million Americans that would die in the ensuing 12 months would die with a great, big smile on their emaciated, diseased faces knowing that North Korea or Iran (or both) had been turned into smoking, radioactive parking lots...not.
Fact is, if you are dealing with a dying madman with nothing to lose, or a religious fanatic who believes that he will usher in the messianic era, by destroying the US as a functioning society, the deterrence is a meaningless concept.