Report: US plan to shoot down North Korean test missiles under consideration

On Tuesday, Fox News' 'Fox & Friends' asked President Donald Trump what he will do if North Korea engages in another missile test.

Though his response was limited to, "We'll find out," The Guardian reports that one possibility under consideration is shooting down the trial weapons North Korea launches.

Two unnamed sources indicated that such an effort would not likely be run out of South Korea, as its U.S.-supplied deterrent system is not yet operational.

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Rather, according to The Guardian, "the military was looking at attempting a missile shoot-down with [a]...missile-defense system aboard a US navy destroyer; or by convincing Japan to use its own missile-defense capabilities against a ballistic missile test traversing Japanese waters."

In regards to such a move, Abraham Denmark, Obama-era Pentagon policy official, commented, "I would see such an action as escalatory, but I couldn't guess how Kim Jong-un would interpret it...I would be concerned he would feel the need to react strongly, as he would not want to appear weak."

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CNN reports that another potential means of disabling future North Korean missile tests is through cyber channels.

The media outlet notes that hacking weapons to render them inoperable is "actively being pursued by the US military, according to public statements and Congressional testimony by current and former members of the armed forces."

In addition to often being difficult to successfully pull off, the hacking route could come with undesirable consequences.

Among them is deteriorating trust among Russian and Chinese leaders, who may grow suspicious that the U.S. is using cyber means to compromise their weapons as well.