The US may be vulnerable to a missile attack from North Korea, officials warn

express.uk

Although Pyongyang’s increasingly threatening behaviour has worried the Pentagon, their missile defence system may not be able to “defend the US homeland”.

An investigation into the system claims that there have been nine simulated attacks since the system was deployed in 2004. But missiles failed to take out their targets six times.

A senior aide who receives detailed briefings on the highly anticipated missile system told NBC News: “None of this stuff works reliably. Nothing. Their interceptor programs are not working.

“They shoot down targets some of the time, but it's not reliable enough that we would want to risk the catastrophic failure of a miss."

However Chris Johnson, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defence Agency, expressed confidence in his agency’s “ability to defend the homeland against ballistic missile threats”.

He added: “While the program had reliability challenges early in its development, we have made significant improvements over the last several years to ensure the system is able to operate as designed.”

The flawed system has reportedly cost US taxpayers more than £30billion to date.