N Korea missiles can hit US capital
JAPAN: North Korea appears to have launched another intercontinental ballistic missile, the Pentagon said yesterday, with experts calculating that Washington, DC, is now technically within Kim Jong Un’s reach.
The launch, the first in more than two months, is a sign the regime is pressing ahead with its stated goal of being able to strike the United States mainland.
‘‘We will take care of it,’’ President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House. It is a ‘‘situation we will handle’’.
The missile travelled about 1000 kilometres and reached a height of about 4500km before landing off the coast of Japan early yesterday local time, flying for a total of 54 minutes.
This suggested it had been fired almost straight up – on a ‘‘lofted trajectory’’ similar to North Korea’s two previous ICBM tests.
If it had been flown on a standard trajectory designed to maximise its reach, this missile would have a range of more than 13,00km, said David Wright, co-director of the global security programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
‘‘This is significantly longer than North Korea’s previous longrange tests, which flew on lofted trajectories for 37 minutes and 47 minutes,’’ Wright said. ‘‘Such a missile would have more than enough range to reach Washington, DC.’’
The US capital is 11,000km from Pyongyang.
Although it may be cold comfort, it is still unlikely that North Korea is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the US mainland.
Scientists do not know the weight of the payload the missile carried, but given the increase in range, it seems likely that it carried a very light mock warhead, Wright said.
‘‘If true, that means it would not be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to this long distance, since such a warhead would be much heavier,’’ Wright said.
‘‘Initial assessment indicates that this missile was an intercontinental ballistic missile,’’ a Pentagon spokesman, Colonel Robert Manning, said of the launch.
The South Korean and Japanese governments both convened emergency national security council meetings, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said such launches ‘‘cannot be tolerated’’.
In Washington, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said the missile was fired ‘‘higher, frankly, than any previous shots’’ that North Korea has taken.
He said Kim Jong Un’s continued effort to develop nuclear weapons ‘‘endangers world peace, regional peace and certainly the United States’’.
The missile was launched just before 3am yesterday local time from the western part of North Korea.
Japan’s Defence Ministry said it landed in waters inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, off the coast of Aomori prefecture.
The coast guard told ships in the area to watch for falling debris, and the Japanese government condemned the launch.
South Korea’s military conducted a ‘‘precision strike’’ missile launch exercise in response, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Although it was the first North Korean missile launch in more than two months, there had been signs that the North was making preparations.
Pyongyang has been working to fit a nuclear warhead to a missile capable of reaching the US mainland, a weapon it says it needs to protect itself from a ‘‘hostile’’ Washington.
It has made rapid progress this year, firing two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July, the second of which was technically capable of reaching as far as Denver or Chicago, or possibly even New York. –