Experts: North Korean nukes can defeat even the world's most advanced missile defense system

finance.yahoo.com

"If it flies, it dies," Adm. Harry Harris told Congress on Wednesday, referring to the US's ability to knock down whatever missiles North Korea could throw their way.

But according to an expert, the same cannot be said of ground-based missile defenses.

South Korea started installing the US's Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) on Wednesday, a powerful missile defense system that has China spooked.

Harris, the commander of US Pacific Command, said it should be operational within days.

The US has successfully tested THAAD 12 times, but never used it in actual combat, which can play out much differently than controlled tests. "Things that work well at home on the test range don't always go as smoothly when deployed," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told the Associated Press.

Another scientist, David Wright, co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program, said that a salvo of North Korean short-range missiles could overwhelm THAAD.

The 10 million people living in Seoul will also not be protected by THAAD, since it is being installed 125 miles south of the city. "It cannot engage missiles fired at Seoul, so it offers no additional protection of the city," David Wright told the Associated Press...

One scientist was even more wary of THAAD's capabilities... Theodore Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said. "The THAAD interceptor is very easily defeated by either causing a missile to tumble end over end or by intentionally fragmenting a rocket into pieces."

In the case of a saturation attack, or a large volume of missiles as Postol described, THAAD's defense capabilities "can be expected to be very low, probably zero or close to that," Postol said.