US Navy deploys bizarre floating ‘GOLF BALL’ off North Korea’s coast to shoot down crackpot Kim Jong-un’s nukes
Strange floating vessel is part of a space based missile defence shield to safeguard the US from Kim Jong-un's nuclear rockets
PENTAGON chiefs have dispatched its weirdest secret “Star Wars” weapon from Pearl Harbour in Hawaii to intercept North Korean nuclear missiles bound for California.
With its huge white globe attached to a table like structure, it has to be mankind's wackiest looking seagoing vessel ever.
Washington is pinning its hope on averting nuclear apocalypse on this extraordinary self-propelled 280 foot, 50,000-ton mammoth.
Called the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX), it is said to be so powerful it could detect a baseball over San Francisco from the other side of the continent.
Now it has reportedly set sail from its base in Pearl Harbour - famous for Japan’s deadly surprise attack in 1941 on a US Navy base there which brought American into World War 2.
It is understood the US Government confirmed it has been deployed to the North Korean coast and local people have snapped it leaving Hawaii several weeks ago.
Its role is to defend against Kim Jong-un's doomsday weapons by directing interceptor rockets.
And the threat is all too real.
Rogue state North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and fifth in September in defiance of furious international reaction and stiff sanctions.
It also test-fired more than 20 ballistic missiles, including the mid-range Musudan missile, which theoretically is capable of flying as far as the US territory of Guam.
Pyongyang is thought to be working on a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile that can hit the American mainland.
Just what is this Star Wars X-Band Radar?
THE Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) can spot one of Kim’s incoming missiles, track it through space and guide rocket-interceptors to blast it into a billion bits before it gets anywhere near downtown LA.
This wacky weapon of nuclear war is actually an oil rig with the world’s most powerful radar equipment encased in golf ball like domes.
The 28 storey sea-beast - measuring two football fields in area - propels itself across the Pacific at a speed of 8-9 knots with its own engine.
Some 86 US Navy and civilian sailors crew the vessel.
Costing $million (£740m), it was born out of President Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program which aimed to create a space-based US missile defence scheme.
But some conspiracy theorists believe the SBX is masquerading as a floating missile defence and is really something much more sinister.
It is claimed it is a secret weapons that has the ability to cause devastating earthquakes .
Conspiracy theorists claim it inadvertently caused the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan that killed 15,000.
And a South Korean weapons expert has warned the secretive state could build up to 79 nuclear devices capable of turning the US into a radiation-blasted hellhole by the end of 2020.
Jong-un has made it clear he wants to do just that.
Earlier this year the madcap tyrant issued one of his most chilling threats yet, promising “doom” is “drawing near”.
A spokesperson said: "North Korean scientists are in high spirit to detonate H-bombs of hundreds of kilotons and megatons, capable of wiping out the whole territory of the US all at once."
Because it is so secret the Pentagon is understandably tight lipped about its exact position.