The U.S. has long relied on a network of advanced missile interceptors along its West Coast to defend against a North Korean nuclear attack, and Washington now plans to spend tens of billions of dollars to augment this system.

But North Korea’s quantitative expansion of its ICBM arsenal has fundamentally called into question the wisdom and viability of America’s status quo approach to homeland missile defense.

When it first devised its missile defense system, the U.S. envisioned it would play a limited role in defending against the DPRK’s still-nascent nuclear