THAAD has never been tried with nuclear weapons. I think that is a good thing, however, if used against nuclear missiles, what will be the outcome?
THAAD destroys/intercepts missiles in it's line of detection. What happens if a nuclear missile is intercepted? There would be debris. There is no contest to that reality. What happens to the debris? Nuclear debris from a yet to arm itself missile and one that is already armed?
Will the nuclear missile explode on contact? Or. Will THAAD prove to be too much of a danger to people on the ground in regard to nukes?
No mushroom cloud or will there be? What happens when an armed nuclear device proves to explode on contact with an interceptor? No one knows. It has never been tried.
THAAD is not a completely developed system if it unknown to what will occur when it intercepts an armed nuclear missile.
ECONOMIC SANCTIONS do not work with a Third World country such as North Korea. There is little to lose when sanctions are placed. The people already suffer and will sustain their lives based in poverty.
The economic sanctions with Russia worked because it targeted the wealthy. But, to tell Pyongyang there will be no wheat or coal, there is little North Korea leadership will regard as important. North Korea is a dictatorship, not a republic or democracy. The leadership secures their well being first and as long as one is not on Kim Jon Un hit list, live goes on as usual. The people don't matter to him to the extent he will sacrifice his nuclear weapons because of sanctions that hurt the citizens of North Korea. He has no real obligations to the majority of North Korea.
Un assumed office in North Korea on April 11, 2012. The aggressive stance of North Korea started before that.
North Korea fired scores of artillery shells (click here) at a South Korean island on Tuesday, killing two soldiers, in one of the heaviest attacks on its neighbor since the Korean War ended in 1953.
The barrage -- the South fired back and sent a fighter jet to the area -- was close to a disputed maritime border on the west of the divided peninsula and the scene of deadly clashes in the past. South Korea was conducting military drills in the area at the time but said it had not been firing at the North.
The attack came as the reclusive North, and its ally China, presses regional powers to return to negotiations on its nuclear weapons program and revelations at the weekend Pyongyang is fast developing another source of material to make atomic bombs.
It also follows moves by leader Kim Jong-il to make his youngest, but unproven, son his heir apparent, leading some analysts to question whether the bombardment might in part have been an attempt to burnish the ruling family's image with the military.
"Houses and mountains are on fire and people are evacuating. You can't see very well because of plumes of smoke," a witness on the island told YTN Television before the shelling, which lasted about an hour, ended.
YTN said at least 200 North Korean shells hit Yeonpyeong, which lies off the west coast of the divided peninsula near a disputed maritime border. Most landed on a military base there.
Photographs from Yeongyeong island, just 120 km (75 miles) west of Seoul, showed columns of smoke rising from buildings. Two soldiers were killed in the attack, 17 wounded. Three civilians were also hurt....
Published on Jun 27, 2012
The bombardment of Yeonpyeong was an artillery engagement between the North Korean military and South Korean forces stationed on Yeonpyeong Island on November 23, 2010. Following a South Korean artillery exercise at waters in the south, North Korean forces fired around 170 artillery shells and rockets at Yeonpyeong Island hitting both military and civilian targets. The shelling caused widespread damage on the island, killing four South Koreans and injuring 19. South Korea retaliated by shelling North Korean gun positions. The North Koreans subsequently stated that they had responded to South Korean shells being fired into North Korean territorial waters. The incident caused an escalation of tension on the Korean Peninsula and prompted widespread international condemnation of the North's actions. The United Nations declared it to be one of the most serious incidents since the end of the Korean War, and by December 18 former UN ambassador Bill Richardson said tensions had escalated to become "the most serious crisis on the Korean peninsula since the 1953 armistice which ended the Korean War."
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