An Asteroid Defense System should be NASA's and the Space Force's number-one priority. True, no really big asteroid has struck Earth since the event that killed off the dinosaurs -- but it's always a possibility we should be prepared for.
By the way, in Armageddon and Deep Impact, an Earthbound asteroid is dealt with by blowing it up with nuclear weapons. That is inadvisible -- now you have a cloud of fragments, with the same aggregate mass and kinetic energy as the original asteroid, heading for Earth along the same trajectory, only now they're radioactive. A better approach would be to try to divert the asteroid's course.
By the way, in Armageddon and Deep Impact, an Earthbound asteroid is dealt with by blowing it up with nuclear weapons. That is inadvisible -- now you have a cloud of fragments, with the same aggregate mass and kinetic energy as the original asteroid, heading for Earth along the same trajectory, only now they're radioactive. A better approach would be to try to divert the asteroid's course.
