Talk of an EMP has been going on a long time. But it never occurred to me that it could come from North Korea.
But with the USS McCain in the area I doubt they could get a missile very far.
My understanding is that the Norks may have a nuke “package” in orbit already and just need to position it in the right place and detonate it to get it to hit the US at a high altitude. Does our missile defense have the ability to handle that scenario? Am I understanding this right? (I’m just looking at this quickly now because I have a bunch of work I need to get done now.)
“But with the USS McCain in the area I doubt they could get a missile very far.”
I think you’re missing the point of the article. They’ve already launched a missile, but instead of targeting us directly, this missile put some unknown device in orbit. If that device is an EMP weapon, and the Norks do have those blueprints courtesy of Russia, then it could deploy from orbit to detonate over the US.
A ship sitting next to NK could do nothing to attack a device coming at us from orbit.
The USS McCain is not worth a bucket of warm spit, unless its captain has the authority to open fire on any missile launch without need of checking with DC first (having to get permission just guarantees the missile will be out of range before DC responds).
They would/could shoot it from a cargo ship 200 miles off shore. We could never stop it.