With the recent North Korean missile tests, I suspect that we’ll see more and more military gadgets pop up over the next decade. The prime candidates? Anti-missile defense systems.

Here’s an image of the Phalanx CIWS ship defense gun, a rapid fire, last measure defense gun for incoming anti-ship missiles. The thing basically operates by firing up to 4,500 rounds per minute in an effort to disable the incoming missile by means of brute force.

The Phalanx is a cruder form of missile defense and is only intended as a last resort. The more sophisticated missile defense systems are intended to intercept missiles early in flight, when they are not yet near their target. Such systems are immensely difficult to engineer as they require pinpoint accuracy across both space and time and must deal with unpredictable variables in the atmosphere. The US anti-missile defense system is still not even close to perfect, despite billions of dollars in investment and the resources of America’s brightest minds.

With the recent test provocations by North Korea, expect for the US to push its defense systems development into hyperdrive. Technological advance is often ushered in by the force of necessity, and nothing spells necessity like a luny-bin dictator with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.

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