North Korea on Wednesday announced the successful test of new intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) equipped with a hypersonic warhead, North Korean media reported.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the regime’s missile system is complete as all missiles are “solid-fuelled, guided warhead” and nuclear-armed.
Kim supervised the test of the Hwasong-16, an IRBM missile equipped with a newly developed hypersonic warhead, on Tuesday, according to an English-language report by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday.
The test launch confirmed the overall design and technical characteristics of the missile and verified the reliability of the weapon system. The KCNA reported:
The test verified the gliding-skip flight orbit and the cross-range maneuvering capability of the hypersonic glide vehicle (warhead). Testing was confined within a range of less than 1,000 kilometers [621.3 miles] for safety. The speed and altitude of the missile was controlled by delaying the start of the second-stage engine and rapidly changing the flight orbit while in the active region.
The IRBM hypersonic warhead “reached its first peak at an altitude of 101.1 kilometres and second peak at 72.3 kilometres during its planned 1,000-kilometre flight to accurately hit the waters of the East Korean Sea,” KCNA said in a report.
This indicates that the missile flew on a typical trajectory for ballistic missiles – rising, falling, then rising again.”
On Tuesday, the South’s Joint Staff said it had detected an intermediate-range ballistic missile fired by Pyongyang and that it fell into the East Sea after flying more than 600 kilometres.
North Korea conducted its first test of a land-based solid-propellant ICBM in November last year. On 14 January this year, it test-fired an intermediate-range hypersonic missile, and on 19 March it tested a ground-based engine for a new hypersonic missile.
