North Korea\u00a0on Monday claimed to have again tested a missile that could become one of the world\u2019s fastest and most accurate weapons \u2013 with the potential to ultimately be fitted with a nuclear warhead. <\/p>\n
Kim Jong Un\u2019s regime successfully tested a hypersonic glide vehicle that was fired aloft using solid-fueled engines on Sunday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, marking the fourth such test claimed by Pyongyang and the first with a potentially game-changing method of propulsion. <\/p>\n
The test was aimed at \u201cverifying the gliding and maneuvering characteristics of intermediate-range hypersonic maneuverable controlled warhead and the reliability of newly developed multi-stage high-thrust solid-fuel engines,\u201d\u00a0KCNA said. <\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the missile\u00a0flew about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) before landing in the waters off the east coast of the\u00a0Korean Peninsula on Sunday afternoon. <\/p>\n
The launch was a clear provocation that \u201cseriously threatens the peace and security of the\u00a0Korean Peninsula,\u201d JCS said. <\/p>\n
Missiles with\u00a0hypersonic glide vehicles\u00a0can theoretically fly at many multiples of the speed of sound and can be very maneuverable in flight, making them almost impossible to shoot down, according to experts. <\/p>\n
North Korea first tested a hypersonic missile on September 28, 2021, followed by two further tests in early January 2022. But Sunday\u2019s test showed a jump in North Korean technology, according to the South Korean military. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe ones tested in 2022 were launched using liquid fuel. This time, the difference between the previous ones and this one would be that North Korea is claiming that it used solid fuel,\u201d Lee Sung-joon, spokesperson for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a news briefing Monday. <\/p>\n
Compared to their liquid-fueled counterparts, solid-fueled missiles are more stable and can be moved more easily to avoid detection before a launch that can be initiated in a matter of minutes, experts say. <\/p>\n
If North Korea can successfully produce and deploy a hypersonic weapon,\u00a0analysts say it could even change the military equation in the region. <\/p>\n
Expert assessments were even more stark following North Korea\u2019s previous claimed hypersonic glide vehicle tests. <\/p>\n
Those systems are designed for defense against ballistic missiles, which descend on their targets from much higher altitudes than hypersonics. <\/p>\n
\u201cA\u00a0hypersonic missile that can defeat advanced missile-defense systems is a game changer if a nuclear warhead is mated to it,\u201d said Drew Thompson, a former US Defense Department official and a visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, in 2021. <\/p>\n
KCNA said after the 2021 launch that developing the \u201cstrategic\u201d weapon was one of the five \u201ctop-priority tasks of the five-year plan\u201d for North Korea\u2019s defense. <\/p>\n
Like ballistic missiles, hypersonic glide weapons are launched by rockets high into the atmosphere. But while a ballistic missile warhead is largely powered by gravity once it begins its descent to its target from as high as 1,000 kilometers, hypersonics dive back to Earth sooner before flattening out their flight path \u2013 flying just tens of kilometers above the ground, according to a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. <\/p>\n
The weapon then uses internal navigation devices to make course corrections and keep it on target while traveling up to 12 times the speed of sound, the report said. <\/p>\n
Roderick Lee, director of research at the American Air University\u2019s China Aerospace Studies Institute, said in 2021 that the lower altitude flight paths of hypersonics mean they stay below radars for longer periods. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat makes things really complicated for the defender,\u201d Lee added. <\/p>\n
Only two countries are thought to have deployable hypersonic missiles: China and Russia. <\/p>\n
In December 2019, Russia said its hypersonic missile system \u2013 known as Avangard \u2013 had entered service. In a speech to the Russian Parliament in 2018,\u00a0President Vladimir Putin called the Avangard system \u201cpractically invulnerable\u201d\u00a0to Western air defenses. <\/p>\n
At a 2019 military parade, China showed off\u00a0its DF-17 missile, which it can use to deploy a hypersonic glide vehicle. <\/p>\n
A report from the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, citing US defense officials, said the DF-17 can deliver a warhead to within meters of its intended target at a range of up to 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles). <\/p>\n
The US has its own hypersonics program. The US Navy said in November that in cooperation with NASA and Sandia National Laboratories it has conducted tests that \u201cdemonstrated advanced hypersonic technologies, capabilities, and prototype systems.\u201d <\/p>\n
According to a 2021 report from the Arms Control Association (ACA) in Washington, hypersonics are contributing to \u201ca burgeoning arms race with all sides rushing the deployment of the new weapons lest they be perceived as falling behind the others in mastery of the new technologies involved.\u201d <\/p>\n
International concerns about weapons proliferation have increased in recent months with the appearance of North Korean missiles on the battlefields of Ukraine. <\/p>\n
The US said earlier this month that Russia fired North Korean-supplied short-range ballistic missiles into Ukraine on December 30 and January 2. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a significant and concerning escalation in the DPRK\u2019s support for Russia,\u201d White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said, referring to North Korea by the acronym for its official name. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect Russia and North Korea to learn from these launches,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Analysts echoed that sentiment, saying the use of North Korean missiles\u00a0in Ukraine can give Pyongyang data it can\u2019t get from a testing program that has seen dozens of the weapons fired over the past few years. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be interesting to see how these missiles perform in a more operational environment and outside of North Korea\u2019s propaganda machine, particularly any indication of accuracy and indeed the guidance systems utilized,\u201d said Joseph Dempsey, research associate for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. <\/p>\n
Fears are growing that Moscow\u2019s cooperation with Pyongyang will increase further as North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui will make an official visit to\u00a0Russia\u00a0this week. <\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry said Sunday that Choe will hold \u201cnegotiations\u201d with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. <\/p>\n
Besides adding North Korean missiles to its arsenal, Russia has also imported more than 1 million artillery shells from Pyongyang, according to\u00a0South\u00a0Korea\u2019s National Intelligence Service. <\/p>\n\n
North Korea\u00a0on Monday claimed to have again tested a missile that could become one of the world\u2019s fastest and most accurate weapons \u2013 with the potential to ultimately be fitted with a nuclear warhead. Kim Jong Un\u2019s regime successfully tested a hypersonic glide vehicle that was fired aloft using solid-fueled engines on Sunday, the state-run <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14103,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}