North Korea claimed on Thursday it was going to test a missile with multiple warheads, a sophisticated weapon aimed at penetrating US missile defenses.
North Korea “successfully conducted a separation and guidance control test of an individual mobile warhead” during Wednesday’s formation, according to the state-run Korean Central Information Company.
KCNA said the intermediate-range solid-fuel ballistic missile’s primary stage engine carried the warheads, which were “correctly guided to three coordinated targets.”
The test, which also included simulated weapons, was aimed at achieving the capability for multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs, KCNA said.
If demonstrated, analysts say the improvements would mark a significant step toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s goal of building a long-range missile with more than one warhead that would crush US missile defenses. , which has restricted interceptors.
South says it’s an ‘exaggeration’
The South Korean military initially described the formation as a failure, noting that it exploded in mid-air during the initial stages of its flight.
On Thursday, a spokesman for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff group dismissed the North Korean claim that the review was not through as “deception and exaggeration.”
While the warheads of this type of missile are usually sovereign in the descent stage, a JCS spokesman said the North Korean missile exploded in mid-air during the initial phase of flight.
“Several videos and photographs taken yesterday by the private sector show that the flight of the missile was not normal,” he said.
South Korean broadcasters aired multiple films on Wednesday showing an object that looked as if it was about to fly out of sight before exploding and falling toward Earth. The films were taken through civilians in South Korea’s remote northwestern islands.
Decker Eveleth, who studies North Korea’s strategic forces for the Center for Naval Analyses, said that given the available network evidence, it is not possible to determine the fate of the formation with a simple assignment.
“At the end the stage was moving. Sometimes it’s a deliberate maneuver and sometimes it’s not,” Eveleth informed VOA.
missile security crisis
North Korea has previously assessed various MIRV elements, including ways to try more than one weapon. However the stealth formation is now redundant, using more than one warhead in addition to decoys, which attempts to confuse missile defense shields.
The US is safe these days, thanks to a missile defense barricade with 44 interceptors designed for ICBM missiles. This figure is set to increase to 64. According to analysts, these numbers leave little margin for error even before including missiles with more than one warhead.
With MIRVs, North Korea has “a much greater potential to overwhelm U.S. missile defenses,” Eveleth said.
“Many nuclear experts spent nearly a decade arguing that missile defense was not cost-effective and that the DPRK would simply build a shield when it launched a program. These concerns were dismissed, primarily because people did not think the DPRK was capable of a program of that scale. And here we are,” Eveleth informed VOA.
By placing more than one warhead on a single missile, North Korea could also reduce its desire for cell missile launchers, or TELs, which it is having trouble producing.
what’s coming
North Korea’s structure represents a tacit effort to work through a strategic artillery wish-list laid out by Kim in 2021. The list also includes hypersonic missiles, secret agent satellites, solid-fuel ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles – all boxes where North Korea has since made progress.
Kim says his nuclear weapons program is vital to deter attacks from the US, which has thousands of troops in the region. He has also warned that he may already value nuclear weapons to counter adversary forces in the region.
Analysts are particularly looking for any indicators of Russian assistance with North Korean guns. Ahead of the occasion, Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty. Then at the signing, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested the association could help facilitate the transfer of hands.
On Thursday, a South Korean military spokesman said it was difficult to determine whether the untouched structures involved any assistance from Russia.
Since North Korea has claimed only “fairly modest and technical” successes with its untouched MIRV formation, additional assessments of the use of such a generation are most likely warranted, said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment of Washington for Global Affairs. Said.
“If their claims are true, I expect to see further recidivism,” Panda said. “Even if it is not completely successful, I suspect the missile administration has gained useful data that will contribute to advancing their missile capabilities, including MIRV capability.”
Lee Juhyun contributed to this file.
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