JUST ANOTHER STRIKE AGAINST A STANDING MILITARY:

Prompt Global Strike - A missile to hit anywhere in 1 hr (Brahmand.com, Apr 28, 2010)

Prompt Global Strike (PGS) is an initiative of the United States military to develop a system capable of a conventional weapon strike anywhere in the world within an hour.

The system is designed for time-critical strike in emergency situation, or to counter terrorist activities like attacking a terrorist leader based on inputs of his location, or against a rogue state preparing to launch an attack by localised destruction of his weapon assets. [...]

The key concept is that in each case, a PGS weapon would be used, but without crossing the nuclear threshold and provoking massive nuclear exchanges.

The new weapon could be launched from air, land or sea on a long-range missile travelling at suborbital altitudes above 350,000ft. The missile releases a hypersonic pilotless plane that receives updates from satellites as it homes in on its target at up to five times the speed of sound, generating so much heat that it has to be shielded with special materials to avoid melting.