The War Nerd is worried

about the Norks:

Am I the only American who doesn't understand why we didn't zap that North Korean missile on the launch pad? Seems like everybody, liberals and rightwingers, agrees we don't need to worry about Kim's silly ol' ICBMs. Kim's just acting up, trying to get attention.

Well, if Kim was trying to get my attention, it worked. I'm funny that way -- every time somebody aims a nuke-capable ICBM at me, I overreact like you wouldn't believe...

That's why I don't think it's so funny that North Korea's perfecting nuclear weapons and ICBM's at full speed while we waste our manpower in Iraq and our money on anti-ICBM cash-siphons that have way, way less chance of working than the Maginot Line ever did.

I'm not quite as pessimistic about the continued uselessness of anti-ICBM missiles, since the current approach where we try to hit the incoming 15,000 mph missile directly with our own interceptor missile seems kind of nuts, like bird hunting with a rifle instead of a shotgun. Instead, put a one megaton warhead on an ABM and detonate it when it gets somewhere pretty close to where the ICBM will be in a few seconds. That sounds technically feasible, although I certainly am not the man to quote. Of course, testing would be a political impossibility, but we ought to be able to model it on computers pretty well while we continue to test our current hit-a-bullet-with-a-bullet approach.

I wonder what the Israelis are planning...

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer