9 Ways the U.S. Could Bomb North Korea's Deepest Bunkers

Efforts to prevent North Korea's

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relentless advance toward developing nuclear ICBMs have so far achieved little. There is no end in sight to the stream of tests and new missiles and increasingly powerful warheads. If sanctions and diplomacy fail, what else is there?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said that "All options are on the table." But a conventional strike against North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities is near impossible. Vital installations are dug hundreds of feet into the sides of mountains, out of the reach of the biggest bunker busters. Now, though, it seems the U.S. has a "game changer," but we don't much about it yet.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is a Pentagon organization tasked with combating weapons of mass destruction, including WMDs stored deep underground in concrete bunkers, tunnels, and mountains. In 2015 the agency commissioned a study on Hardened and Deeply Buried Targets (HDBT) by the JASON advisory panel, then a "Counter-Weapons of Mass Destruction/ Hardened and Deeply Buried Targets Game Changer Report" was passed to the Pentagon's Advanced Capability and Deterrence Panel.