+1 for B5 reference;^)

It's all about kinetic energy, and an orbital drop brings devastating energy to bear on the target. Not too many aircraft can carry a 24,000 lb payload, so a development program might be required. Once you go down that road, I would favor a big aircraft and a booster system to lob the tungsten rod out of the atmosphere some distance from the target.

Of course you could use smaller rods, or rods of a less dense composition if the drop speed is less, and they would do considerable damage. However, they might not be powerful enough to dig out a really deep missile site. The North Koreans use caves dug into the base of mountains to hide their mobile missiles, so a vertical drop has to penetrate quite a bit of rock before it can collapse a tunnel. Maybe a rain of the smaller rods at the entrance of the tunnel would trap the mobile weapon behind a curtain of collapsed rock.

I worked on the AirBorne Laser (ABL) program before it was cancelled, and it was quite effective demonstrating that it could destroy missiles in boost phase. However, due to line of sight limitations, and the need to kill the missile in powered flight, the 747 would have to fly within range of North Korea's long range antiaircraft missiles while it loitered waiting for the launch.

There were some ideas for hypersonic missiles that could be launched from Aegis class cruisers and hit the North Korean missiles during boost, but I don't know if that idea ever took off. Because of the short time of boost, even hypersonic (Mach 5+) missiles couldn't be launched from very far away, which could jeopardize the American cruiser, loitering right in the attack volume of North Korean submarines.

There was some study of using the "smart pebbles" orbiting kinetic missile killers against boosting missiles. That was kind of ruled out because the number of orbiting little kill vehicles would have to be huge to insure at least one could deorbit at the right time to hit a boosting missile.

Most sane human beings want a peaceful existence. Unfortunately there are those who think the best kind of peace is in eliminating others who might be competitive. We've tried adopting a non-aggressive policy, but it takes cooperation and willing transparency from all parties for that to succeed. Nuclear disarmament is a great idea, and we removed our nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula to encourage North Korea not to pursue nuclear weapons. That didn't work, did it?

The "Rods from God" system was intended to dig out nuclear weapons without having to endanger civilians. The reason it wasn't pursued was because President Reagan preferred developing a shield that would make nuclear weapons impractical. He offered the dismantling of America's nuclear arsenal, and the sharing of our antimissile technology with the USSR, and they rejected his offer. Like I said, without cooperation, peace is hard to come by.

Let me ask you this: why would you trust me not to harm you?

Your answer must meet only a single condition ... it can never, in any event, result in your calling upon a superior force to confine my actions.