North Korea has confirmed it’s latest missile test was an ICBM missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead over great distances. Analysts claim that missile is capable of hitting Alaska. The launch makes war with North Korea more likely as the United States cannot afford to let a mad man loose with nuclear weapons that could strike the continental United States. President Trump is urging China to rein in their long time ally before it’s too late.
The North has long sought to build a rocket capable of delivering an atomic warhead to the continental United States – something that Trump has vowed ‘won’t happen’, and launch marks a new phase in the country’s decades-long weapons program.
In an announcement of the missile test, North Korean officials called the launch, which leader Kim Jong-un supervised, a ‘glistening miracle’.
The missile launch prompted control specialist Jeffrey Lewis to respond on Twitter: ‘That’s it. It’s an ICBM. An ICBM that can hit Anchorage not San Francisco, but still.’
David Wright, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote on the organisation’s allthingsnuclear blog that the available figures implied the missile ‘could reach a maximum range of roughly 6,700 km on a standard trajectory’.
‘That range would not be enough to reach the lower 48 states or the large islands of Hawaii, but would allow it to reach all of Alaska.’
The ‘landmark’ test of a Hwasong-14 missile was overseen by Kim, an emotional female announcer said on state Korean Central Television.
It reached an altitude of 1741 miles (2,802 kilometres) and flew 580 miles (933 kilometres) for 39 minutes, she added.
‘The test-fire was conducted at the highest angle and did not have any negative impact on the safety of neighboring countries,’ announcer Ri Chun-Hee, who previously told her loyal viewers of the deaths of the country’s founder Kim Il-Sung and his son Kim Jong-Il, said.
‘As the dignified nuclear power who possesses the strongest intercontinental ballistic rocket which is capable of hitting any part of the world along with the nuclear weapons, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) will fundamentally terminate the US nuclear war threats and blackmail and credibly protect the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and the region,’ she added.
‘Kim Jong Un, Supreme Leader of our party, state and the army, personally observed the process of the test-launch in field and solemnly declared before the world its shining success,’ the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an accompanying article.
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