I don’t think we should give away the store, some of our stuff is highly accurate (THAAD) but the incoming has to be somewhat on a threatening trajectory for this concept to have a good chance. As I see it, the trajectory over the north of Japan is not really threatening Guam. The Japanese may have been in the threat zone, but I do not know they are deployed on the north island — do you know?
The 40 % value is more like our stuff in Alaska which would be launched against a trajectory heading for the CONUS. It has recently been upgraded and has greater accuracy but it takes time to build and deploy and I don’t know where we are in all this.
However, I believe if we had a chance we would have taken it, because like NK we would learn from a “realistic” defensive launch and if our chances were as low as you think, we would have launch more than one.
You raise some interesting points. We did do a test firing from Vandenberg a few weeks ago that was claimed as a success and the missile that was hit was a long way down range and fast. As far as NK is concerned, the ongoing issue is the defense of Seoul. Remove Seoul as a problem and I think we would make strategic strikes on NK. The Hobson’s Choice is do we wait until NK decides to really shoot something at the CONUS before we take action in order to protect Seoul from taking any major hits? The fact of the matter, Trump has been dealt a $hit hand here thanks to every effing president we’ve had since the end of WWII, starting with that worthless turd Truman. The have all kicked the NK can down the road. Back then, we had a supreme position of strength that should have been used on NK, and China (and maybe Russia if they had stuck their noses in). And as each year passed and we appeased the Norks, they moved steadily toward their goal of being a nuclear power. Now they are there. And we also have Iran and Pakistan to contend with as well.
Now there’s talk of trade sanctions on China, but you can hear it now from all our quisling capitalists when they see national security juxtaposed with their bottom lines. We can crash China’s economy if we chose, but our Chamber of Communists will pi$$ and moan if that route adversely affects their bottom lines, which it most certainly will.