US would need to act fast to hit back in missile attack

US President Donald Trump would have “maybe 10 minutes” to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike against North Korea should it ever fire a missile that’s capable of reaching the US mainland, experts say.

Speaking about what would happen in the event of a nuclear strike from the North, scientist David Wright, of the UCS Global Security Program, and rocket analyst Markus Schiller, of ST Analytics in Germany, described how the drama would unfold.

“The timelines are short,” Dr Wright explained, accord- ing to The New York Post.

“Even for long-range missiles, there are a lot of steps that go into detecting the launch and figuring out what it is, leaving the president with maybe 10 minutes to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike.”

While experts insist that North Korea is still not capable of launching a missile that could reach the US, the communist nation on Monday claimed it could.

Its state-run KCNA news service alleged that it had the ability to send a “large-size heavy nuclear warhead” across the Pacific following its test of a Hwasong-12 missile (pictured) over the weekend.

But Kim Dong-yub, professor at South Korea’s Kyungnam University, told local media that they’d be lucky to reach Alaska or Hawaii, at best.