Pyongyang successfully test-fired a new hypersonic missile, state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said yesterday, the latest step in a plan North Korean leader Kim Jong-un described as aimed at using solid fuel to power its entire range of missiles.
The North is developing missiles and nuclear weapons undeterred by sanctions in the wake of UN Security Council bans, while analysts say solid-fuel missiles can be faster to deploy than liquid-fuel variants.
It drew swift condemnation from neighbors South Korea and Japan, as well as the US for firing the intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) into the sea on Tuesday.
Photo: AFP / the Korean Central News Agency via KNS
Kim oversaw the launch of the new Hwasong-16B missile, KCNA said, calling it a strategic weapon showcasing the “absolute superiority” of the North’s defense technology.
It perfects the North’s project for “putting all the tactical, operational and strategic missiles with various ranges on solid-fuelled, warhead-controlled and nuclear warhead-carrying basis,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.
That would give North Korea the capacity for “rapidly, accurately and powerfully striking any target in the enemy side worldwide,” Kim said.
Analysts said it was unclear if the North would exclusively use solid-fuel missiles, and what the switch would mean for its arsenal of liquid-fuel weapons, such as its largest Hwasong-17 and Hwasong-15 ICBMs.
North Korea might favor solid-fuel systems where possible, but actually phasing out liquid-fuel weapons is likely to play out over years, said Ankit Panda, Stanton senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“There are obvious strategic advantages to an all-solid-fuel force for them in the form of greater promptness, responsiveness and survivability,” he added.
North Korea would need to have high confidence in its production capabilities to allow solid-fuel missiles to sit for a number of years, during which they could develop imperfections that lead to in-flight failures, Panda added.
“India and other countries have had problems with this sort of thing with solid-fuel missiles,” he said. “Liquid-fuel missiles, despite their strategic disadvantages, don’t face this particular long-term handling problem.”
A move away from liquid fuel would be surprising, given recent state media coverage of such weapons, but would make sense if North Korea wants an extremely responsive missile force, said Decker Eveleth, a graduate research assistant at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California.
“Solid-fuel missiles are much, much faster to get off the ground in an emergency,” he said on X.
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