North Korea has released images of what it claims is the Hwasong-15 missile tested this week, a new intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the US mainland.
Dozens of photos were published in North Korean state media today. USA Today calls the missile a “monster” while CNN says the photos “a major advance in technology and threat”.
Michael Duitsman, a researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, tweeted photos of the missile, which he described as a “very big missile... And I don't mean Big for North Korea. Only a few countries can produce missiles of this size, and North Korea just joined the club.”
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The new ICBM seems to have a different engine arrangement and improved steering compared to the smaller Hwasong-14 ICBM tested twice in July, Duitsman says.
US intelligence agencies are continuing to assess claims that North Korea has developed a dangerous new type of missile.
Three US officials told ABC News that they are carrying out an analysis of Tuesday’s missile launch, and that it could be weeks before they determine if it is a new type of missile.
The most recent launch prompted some analysts to question whether North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has adopted a new style for missile launches and what it might mean. For one thing, the missile was not fired over Japan, as it has been in the past, nor was it fired into the waters around the US military’s Pacific hub of Guam. The timing was also different, with the missile test in the evening.
“These late tests may serve a broader strategy instead - perhaps showing that North Korea can launch a missile anytime and anywhere with little warning, as it would have to in a real wartime scenario,” Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, told The Washington Post.
AP’s South Korea bureau chief Foster Klug says Kim showed a “glimmer of restraint” by not conducting an even more worrying atmospheric test of a nuclear weapon flying onboard a long-range missile over the Pacific.
The latest test could indicate that Kim will soon consider its nuclear program “done” and focus on its sluggish economy, Vipin Narang, a nuclear strategy expert at MIT, told AP.
South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh says that even if such a move were to see Pyongyang shift away from threats toward dialogue, the US and South Korea aren’t likely to accept such overtures at face value.
US Ambassador Nikki Haley told the UN yesterday that North Korea's missile launch “brings us closer to war”.
