N Korea missile puts all of US mainland in nuclear attack range

Asia Times

18-02-2025

North Korea is building its missile capabilities to strike the US mainland, threatening to overwhelm US defenses and intensifying fears of a strategic shift in the Korean Peninsula's power balance.
In a statement this month before the US Senate Armed Forces Committee, General Gregory Guillot, head of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), said that North Korea's growing intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capabilities pose a direct threat to the US mainland, with its latest solid-propellant Hwasong-19 missile likely capable of delivering a nuclear payload to targets across North America.
The new missile's solid-fuel design significantly reduces launch preparation time, complicating preemptive detection and interception efforts.
Guillot warned that North Korea's rapid transition from missile development to serial production could soon outpace US ballistic missile defenses, particularly if North Korea expands its arsenal beyond current estimates.
He also highlighted the risk of technological exchanges between North Korea and Russia, with potential quid pro quo arrangements bolstering the former's advanced strategic weapons program.
These developments and broader strategic cooperation between US adversaries increase the likelihood of simultaneous multi-domain threats to the US homeland, further stressing existing missile defense systems.
In response, Guillot underscored the urgent need for next-generation missile defenses, including the timely deployment of the Next-Generation Interceptor (NGI) and improved domain awareness technologies to counter increasingly sophisticated adversary missile threats.
In a November 2024 article for 38 North, Vann Van Diepen says North Korea's Hwasong-19 ICBM represents a significant advance in the country's strategic missile capabilities, likely incorporating a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) system.
Van Diepen states that the larger solid-fuel Hwasong-19, compared to the Hwasong-18, has improved boost capability that increases payload capacity without extending range, as the previous ICBM can already reach the US mainland. He notes that the Hwasong-19's launch footage shows a probable post-boost vehicle (PBV), essential for MIRV deployment.
He notes that while further testing is required to ensure the MIRVs survive atmospheric reentry, a successful MIRV-equipped Hwasong-19 would increase the number of warheads per missile, improve second-strike resilience and jeopardize US missile defense.
However, Thomas Newdick points out in a June 2024 article for The War Zone that while it may be technically feasible for North Korea to place multiple warheads on a missile, putting them on multiple targets is more complex.
Newdick states that it isn't clear whether North Korea has mastered the capability to accurately put a warhead on a target after release from a ballistic missile.
The ongoing Ukraine war may have been an enormous boon to North Korea in that area. This month, Newsweek reported that North Korean ballistic missiles used against Ukraine have become more accurate since last year, now hitting within 50 to 100 meters of their targets, compared to earlier in the conflict, where they had an accuracy of 1 to 3 kilometers.
As North Korea moves to serialized ICBM production, it raises the possibility of overwhelming limited US missile defenses. Politico reported in February 2023 that North Korea might have more ICBMs than the US has interceptors after displaying 10-12 Hwasong-17 ICBMs during a nighttime parade in Pyongyang.
Politico notes that if North Korea could fit four warheads on each missile, those missiles could hypothetically overwhelm the US Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which has only 44 interceptors. Adding to the problem of limited interceptors, the GMD has shown just 55% effectiveness in highly scripted tests and has often needed three interceptors to intercept a single warhead.
Cognizant of US missile defense limitations, in January 2025, US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to build a US 'Iron Dome,' a next-generation missile defense system incorporating space-based interceptors (SBI) to defeat hypersonic weapons, ballistic and cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks.
However, experts are divided over the feasibility of the US Iron Dome project and whether it would increase deterrence or instability.
In a Breaking Defense article this month, Ankit Panda says that the US Iron Dome does not solve the vulnerability problem and merely incentivizes US adversaries to find new delivery methods for nuclear weapons, such as nuclear torpedoes or fractional orbital bombardment (FOB) systems.
In line with that, North Korea has developed the 'Haeil' nuclear-armed underwater drone designed to infiltrate enemy waters and detonate to create a radioactive tsunami to destroy enemy ports and ships. However, it is not clear whether North Korea's Haeil is a real weapon or a propaganda ploy.
Further, Jessica West and Victoria Samson mention for Breaking Defense that space-based interceptors could fuel arms races and derail international norms against the militarization of space.
In a January 2025 American Enterprise Institute (AEI) article, Todd Harrison says that while the cost to build a system of 1,900 SBIs could reach US$11-27 billion, such a constellation could only intercept two incoming missiles while all other interceptors remain out of range.
Harrison stresses the absenteeism problem in which low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites spend most of their time above the wrong part of Earth. Such uncertainty in North Korean nuclear capabilities and US missile defenses is in line with varying views about the former's position when it comes to its nuclear arsenal.
While it is believed that North Korea aims to use its nuclear weapons for coercion to achieve political and military objectives, Hwee-rhak Park and Wooyun Jo mention in a December 2024 article in the peer-reviewed Defense & Security Analysis journal that North Korea has two goals in building its nuclear arsenal: first, to break US nuclear extended deterrence (NED) in the Korean Peninsula, and second, to reunify the Korean Peninsula under its regime.
Park and Jo mention that the US may renege on its NED posture in the Korean Peninsula, fearing nuclear retaliation by North Korea against the US mainland. They say that the US may respond with tactical nuclear weapons only as long as North Korea limits the use of nuclear weapons on South Korean military targets.
In the worst-case scenario, Park and Jo say that North Korea could launch several nuclear weapons against South Korean cities to cripple or demoralize the latter's warfighting capabilities before advancing ground forces into the latter's territory to force a surrender.
At the same time, they say North Korea can endeavor not to attack US forces in South Korea while threatening a nuclear attack against them should they take offensive action, forcing a US withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula. However, they stress that using nuclear weapons against the US or South Korea would be a life-or-death decision by the North Korean regime.
Given those possibilities, Park and Jo recommend that the US and South Korea strengthen nuclear deterrence measures, such as the constant deployment of US nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) near the Korean Peninsula, deployment of nuclear gravity bombs and missiles in Guam, enter a nuclear-sharing agreement and prepare US and South Korean forces to fight a nuclear war.