New Delhi: It takes just 33 minutes for a missile fired by North Korea to reach the USA, says a study.
For an intercontinental ballistic missile America sitting half-a-world away is within arm’s reach.
The findings by Chinese scientists say that if the US missile defence system fails to intercept, warheads can hit central US.
Tianran Xu , Open Nuclear Network analyst, told CNN that targets on the west coast and the east coast are within easy reach.
The findings are made after scientists carried out a simulation of a North Korean missile attack on the US.
The Chinese study considered the capabilities of North Korea’s Hwasong-15 nuclear-capable missile with a range of 13,000km.
The team of scientists at Beijing Institute of Electronic System Engineering said the range of the missile is “sufficient to hit the entire US homeland”.
The US missile headquarters will receive an alert in about 20 seconds of North Korea launching a missile.
The first batch of intercepting missiles will take off within 11 minutes of the incident from Fort Greely in Alaska.
Failing which another wave of interceptors will be launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The study suggests that the opponent can exploit the ‘ gaps’ in the ‘Kill chain’ of US missile defence network in identifying and defending against an attack.
The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program of US has a failing test record in intercepting missiles, according to a report.
The GMD system is effective only in 55 per cent of time in ‘highly-scripted tests’ but it cannot be relied during real world scenario.