helium? well, you know, if in fact it had headed towards a significantly populated area, this was going to be the key question that might have gone all the way to the white house. you have two armed f-16s trailing it and the faa trying to cheer out air space ahead of it. would you be prepared to bring this down using military force? would you shoot it down to get it on the ground as quickly and safely as possible if it was headed for a populated area. we re told by the officials, the decision was, how could you get it down as quickly and safely as possible and they tracked it all the way and it began to deflate and, by all accounts, come down on it is own. barbara, thank you very much. in just a moment, we re going to find out more about what is on this blimp. it s part of a missile defense system to track enemy missiles if they were coming in to the eastern united states. it s massive. and it s cable dragged for miles. it hit power lines.
a long time and they were suddenly faced with the requirement to actually go deploy something. a spokesman for the agency says it respect fully disagrees with that characterization but doesn t deny the allegations of failed systems now shelved. among them, a project called the airborne laser, 747s equipped with chemical lasers that would incinerate enemy missiles. that program cost $5.3 billion according to the l.a. times but was scrapped because the planes would have had to fly too close to an enemy s borders. then there s the kinetic enemy interceptor. cool name but the times says it was too long to fit onto navy ships and the range was too limited for land launches. cost? $1.7 billion. and the multiple kill vehicle, a bundle of miniature missile inseptemberers. ground-based rockets would have had to be retrofitted to make this work. that was $700 million. supporters of the agency don t call these projects waste saying
destroyer can target enemy missiles. that its function. bill: greg pal court reportered extensively out of that secretive nation. he is live from london. what the latest you re hearing out of north korea? reporter: significant news we re getting out of the north korea this time about their nuclear capabilities. pongyang announcing they will start two different nuclear systems with the aim in their words, quote, bolstering their nuclear arms forces in quantity and quality. the reactor in was shot down in 2008. the cooling tower destroyed. part of the negotiations with the west. i m told that whole thing can be rebuilt, restored to service in short as time as six months. they can turn out enough plutonium from that plant to make a bomb in one year. just as dangerous i am told, a parallel uranium enrichment program which pongyang says today they are revving up, bill. bill: so the rhetoric continues. how is the united states reacting to that, greg?
after just months in action, performed at success rates that normally takes years, the systems are mobile, trucked around the 8,000 square miles of israel depending on where conflicts exist. now, iron dome s key parts include a 20-missile battery and this transmission station which i ll show you here. this transmission station is just part of that. and the way the system works is there s a ground radar section that detects enemy missiles once they re launched. and you can see them here on the right-hand side. and what happens is iron dome intercepters are deployed in response. they are faster than the enemy missile and can get them head on or explode when they get close. the concept results in what israeli officials say is an 84% effectiveness rate unheard of before in missile defense systems. the reason why it s more effective, it ignores enemy missiles going into farmlands
three-month window between the american elections and the inauguration of the next president. and president obama since the first day in office in 2009 has publicly condemned israel, our policy in judea and samaria, in the west bank and in jerusalem, in our capital. he was never going to desist from that. he was going to keep on coming at us on that, and we assumed that this window would be a very dangerous time for us. and it is, and it is. but, ambassador, what can you do about this now and what can you expect from the trump administration going forward? well, you know about the iron dome, judge. yes. it is an advanced anti-ballistic system that has protected israel s skies for years now, and it takes down enemy missiles coming at us. we need a diplomatic and a legal iron dome where the united states says to those entities and countries that want to do us harm, that want to boycott us, that want to sanction us, if you touch the state of israel you re