North Korea could soon have the potential to launch an attack on Hawaii and destroy U.S. military bases in the Pacific, The Washington Free Beacon reports.
And experts are calling for an immediate upgrade of missile defenses to guard against any such attack, the Free Beacon reports.
"Senior national security leaders have stated that the U.S. needs to work off the assumption that North Korea will have ICBM capabilities soon, and in this business 'soon' could mean 5 to 10 years, or earlier," Ariel Cohen, director of the Center for Energy, Natural Resources, and Geopolitics at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, told the Beacon.
"This question is, do we need to wait until North Korea successfully launches a test ICBM to know that they have that capacity?"
The Beacon reported Hawaii already has a missile facility, which "hosts an experimental land-based ballistic missile defense system called Aegis Ashore." And Cohen said it needs to be upgraded from "experimental" to "operational." He estimated the upgrade would cost $41 million.
North Korea's recent launch of four ballistic missiles renewed concerns about the nation's missile and nuclear weapons programs, ABC News reported.
It noted: "North Korea's intermediate-range missiles do not have the capability of reaching Hawaii or Alaska. However, if reconfigured for a different trajectory, it is possible for the Unha rocket to come close to those states."
Meanwhile, Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation, predicted the administration will look at defense and deterrence tactics to use against North Korea, rather than diplomacy," the Beacon reported.
"Our intelligence has been surprised again and again by technology developments by adversaries or attacks the U.S. didn't foresee," Cohen said. "Hawaii has a particularly symbolic history of this given the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Let's not be surprised this time, let's be prepared."
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