North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is “likely” to be able to deliver a 500kg warhead to San Diego, California, within two years, a US monitoring group said yesterday, after its launch sparked global alarm last week.
Pyongyang’s first successful ICBM test was described by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a gift to “American bastards.”
The Hwasong-14 missile is estimated to have a range of 7,000km to 8,000km — enough to reach Alaska or Hawaii — aerospace engineer John Schilling wrote on the 38 North Web site, a monitoring project linked to Johns Hopkins university.
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“If the Hwasong-14 is put together the way we think it is, it can probably do a bit better than that when all the bugs are worked out,” he wrote, projecting a range of 9,700km with a 500kg warhead on board.
“The North Koreans won’t be able to achieve this performance tomorrow, but they likely will eventually,” he added.
At present, it would be “lucky to hit even a city-sized target,” he said, citing limits to its re-entry technology.
However, with “a year or two of additional testing and development, it will likely become a missile that can reliably deliver a single nuclear warhead to targets along the US west coast, possibly with enough accuracy to destroy soft military targets like naval bases,” such as that in San Diego, he said.
South Korea’s intelligence agency likewise does not believe North Korea has secured re-entry capabilities for its intercontinental ballistic missile, a South Korean lawmaker said yesterday.
Yi Wan-young, a member of the South Korean parliament’s intelligence committee, told reporters during a televised briefing that the South Korean National Intelligence Service has not been able to confirm that re-entry was successful.
“Considering how North Korea does not have any testing facilities [for re-entry technology], the agency believes [North Korea] has not yet secured that technology,” Yi said.
The agency believed the missile launched last week was a modified version of the KN-17 intermediate range missile that was tested in May, Yi said.
He added that the agency had not detected any unusual activity at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site.
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