N Korea tests hypersonic gliding missile
SEOUL: North Korea has successfully tested a new hypersonic gliding missile, state media reported on Wednesday, in what would be the nucleararmed nation’s latest advance in weapons technology.
Tuesday’s launch was of “great strategic significance”, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, as the North seeks to increase its defence capabilities a “thousand-fold”.
Hypersonic missiles move far faster and are more agile than standard ones, making them much harder for missile defence systems - on which the US is spending billions - to intercept.
The launch from Jagang province “confirmed the navigational control and stability of the missile”, along with its “guiding manoeuvrability and the gliding flight characteristics of the detached hypersonic gliding warhead” and the engine, according to KCNA, which called it the Hwasong-8.
The launch was watched by top official Pak Jong-chon, it said, making no mention of leader Kim Jong-un. The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried a picture of the weapon with a set of guidance fins at the base of its nose cone - ascending into the morning sky.
The South Korean military had announced the launch shortly after it happened on on Tuesday, but it did not reveal the missile’s maximum altitude and flight distance afterwards, information it normally makes available within around an hour. On Wednesday, Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff said the South Korean and US militaries were “capable of detecting and intercepting it”.
“Based on an assessment of its characteristics such as speed, it is at an initial phase of development and will take a considerable time to be deployed,” they said in a statement.
Both Koreas are building up their weapons capabilities in what could become an arms race on the divided peninsula, with ramifications for neighbouring Japan, China and the wider region.
The nuclear-armed North, which invaded the South in 1950, is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its banned nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes, and earlier this month said it had tested a long-range cruise missile.