The press would have us believe that we are nearly at World War III and the ground is being laid by North Korea's firing of a ballistic missile that could probably hit Alaska if everything goes well.
I want to take you back to 1997 when the same thing - exactly the same thing - was being discussed by the press and various Congressional and White House politicians. They were in a panic and debating a serious question about whether or not North Korea's new missile could reach the United States. I remember this better than most because I was in the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and it was our job to express to all sides what the real issues were in defending ourselves from "rouge states" like North Korea. I remind you that North Korea could reach both Alaska and Hawaii but the issue by the Clinton Administration was how much money to spend on missile defense. It chose to say North Korea could not hit the continental United States, which was often repeated in Congress as "cannot hit the United States". It upset the delegations from Alaska and Hawaii who considered themselves a part of the USA. We are saying the same words 18 years later, and it makes me wonder what missile development was being done over the years. Are they no better today than then?
I might also add that we spent a good part of $80 Billion building a missile defense system to counter that threat. I'm not sure what happened since I left in 2000, but I'm pretty sure that missile system is still up there and functioning. We might want to ask the Army if it actually works, or have they done something to make it less reliable or accurate. In the meantime, we have THAAD which is an area defense system that was not operational in 2000. It has hit some targets too and is a pretty good thing if you are wanting to shoot down a missile.
So, we might ask why everyone seems to be in a panic over the North testing a long range missile capable of hitting Alaska? Maybe there is something more to this than meets the eye.
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