hitting close to home
Experts: East Coast in range of Kim’s ICBM
The ballistic missile North Korea launched yesterday is potent enough to put Boston — and nearly Washington, D.C. — in target range, experts said, as Kim Jong Un closes in on achieving a first-strike capability on the Western powers he deems a threat to Pyongyang.
The ICBM, launched in the middle of the night from the center of the country, flew nearly straight up to a height of 2,300 miles during its 45-minute trip before crashing 600 miles away in the Sea of Japan.
If the missile had taken a standard trajectory, it could’ve traveled more than 6,500 miles to target Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Boston, New York and nearly Washington, D.C., according to calculations by physicist David Wright, co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program.
“Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago appear to be well within range of this missile, [and] Boston and New York may be just within range,” Wright wrote yesterday. “Washington DC may be just out of range.”
“It’s a big jump,” Wright told the Herald, from the July 4 ballistic missile launch that put some territories in Alaska in target range.
“At this point they’ve convinced me they have longrange missiles now they can use,” Wright said. “We have to think about them a little differently than we have in the past, and I hope the government decides to do that.”
North Korea’s second intercontinental ballistic missile test this month prompted Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. and Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command Adm. Harry Harris to call their counterparts in South Korea to express “the ironclad commitment to the U.S.-Republic of Korea alliance” and “discuss military response options.” The U.S. and South Korea responded with joint livefire exercises.
President Trump has vowed he will not allow North Korea to obtain a deliverable nuclear warhead, though his Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded the North could have a reliable ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon as early as next year — two years earlier than the agency’s prior estimate.
In a statement, Trump condemned the “latest reckless and dangerous action by the North Korean regime.”
“The United States condemns this test and rejects the regime’s claim that these tests — and these weapons — ensure North Korea’s security,” Trump said. “In reality, they have the opposite effect” by isolating the North and weakening its economy.
Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies said this test shows the North is gaining leverage on the U.S.
“The real thing we got to accept is the reality that the North Koreans can hold us at risk,” Lewis said.
“That means we are going to have to make different decisions about things like casually talking about killing Kim Jong Un,” Lewis said. “The reality is people need to cut the testosterone in half.”