Originally Posted by
tartare
But here's the point.
Even with guided missile ships, THAAD and AEGIS, shooting down a North Korean missile is not an absolute certainty.
This article speculates the US and Japan may just watch for that very reason.
Its 96 percent prediction of a successful shootdown however appears optimistic. Tests of
AEGIS have been highly engineered.
AFAIK it hasn't been subject to a `real-world' test yet? I may be wrong.
THAAD tests to date appear to be repleat with failures.
I realise that B-1s can be launched and retrieved within 15 minutes - all a crewman has to do is hit the Alert Start button on the nosewheel oleo and the APU will begin to power up all four engines as the crew climb the ladder.
To be clearer, my question was when does the US launch
and strike. Is the mere firing of a missile in your general direction to land relatively close to territory of yours provocation enough?
In Japan's case, no.
Is Guam different...?
well Guam is U.S territory- and as I speculated before re the likely missile ( Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missiles ) is a not too reliable acid and udmh fueled missile- during powereed flight is nn easy target for near miss to take out. And who wants to take a chance on what it may be armed with- opr even unarmed. And at that range ( Guam ) warhead is probably low supersonic or even subsonic at less than 30 k feet. So chances of a good intercept IMHO are very good.
IMHO- U.S will first try to intercept- and even if successful- will most likely launch a impressive fireworks display over a certain palace - sort of a " gotcha " whenever we want you notice.
And by the way the start button on nosegear was first planned for the B-70 in the late 50's, but planned to use a wheeled apu " cart" to be dropped just as plane started to takeoff.