North Korea fires medium-range ballistic missile
North Korea fired a medium-range ballistic missile yesterday, with South Korea, the United States and Japan conducting a joint aerial exercise involving nuclear-capable B-52H bombers just hours later.
Pyongyang’s latest launch comes less than two weeks after Kim supervised a solid-fuel engine test for a new intermediate-range hypersonic missile (IRBM), with experts suggesting yessterday’s launch could be of the same weapon.
Seoul’s military said the missile, launched early yesterday, flew around 600 kilometres before splashing down in waters between South Korea and Japan.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the military was analysing the launch, with a defence official telling the Yonhap news agency that it had likely involved a hypersonic warhead “on top of the delivery system used in the engine test last month”.
North Korea has long sought to master more advanced hypersonic and solid fuel technologies, to make its missiles more able to neutralise South Korean-US missile defence systems and threaten America’s regional military bases.
In January, Pyongyang said it had launched a solidfuel IRBM tipped with a hypersonic warhead, then last month flagged the successful engine test of the “new-type intermediate-range hypersonic missile”.
Hypersonic missiles are faster and can manoeuvre mid-flight, making them harder to
track and intercept, while solid-fuel missiles do not need to be fuelled before launch, making them harder to find and destroy, as well as quicker to use.
Seoul’s defence ministry said it conducted a joint aerial exercise with Washington and Tokyo yesterday involving a nuclear-capable B-52H bomber and F-15K fighter jets near the Korean peninsula. (AFP)