Latest news with #Hwasong-19ICBM
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
North Korea disguises secret missile base as golf course
North Korea is hiding a new launch site for intercontinental ballistic missiles in plain sight, disguising the base as a golf course on the outskirts of Pyongyang. The site was until last year the location of Kim Jong-un's Winter Palace, also known as the Ryokpo residence, in a heavily wooded valley about 20 miles south-east of the capital. However, the palace complex was recently demolished and replaced with a series of new structures, roads and what appear to be golf greens. A closer examination of the facilities using near-infrared images over the course of the construction showed that the greens were reinforced with concrete bases in June, with a thin layer of soil added in August. By November, analysts determined that the grass had taken hold and the site resembled a golf course. But analysts from the Middlesbury Institute's James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies have said that flat areas with concrete bases are ideal launch pads for long-range ballistic missiles and that some of the other buildings at the site are not typically found at a golf course. New roads at the site are wide enough to accommodate the tractor-erector vehicles required to manoeuvre the Hwasong-19 ICBM into position. The 92-foot missile was first launched successfully in October 2024, can carry a nuclear warhead and has a range of at least 9,300 miles, which puts all of North America and Europe within range. One of the new buildings at the site is a four-storey building that is estimated to be 118ft high and would be able to accommodate missiles in an upright position. Sam Lair, a member of the research team, told Radio Free Asia: 'While this facility could be used for shorter range systems like the Hwasong-11/KN-23/KN-24 series of missiles, the height of the high-bay building suggests it is also built to allow longer-range systems to operate from it.' He added: 'You would not need a 36 meters [118 feet] high building for just short-range systems'. Behind the building is another structure that has been covered in earth, for greater protection as well as concealment, that could house four launch vehicles. North Korea on Monday launched a volley of ballistic missiles into waters off its west coast, coinciding with the start of the Freedom Shield joint US-South Korean military exercises in the South. The drills will last for 11 days and the South Korean joint chiefs of staff issued a statement that its forces were in a 'full readiness posture' and were closely co-operating with US forces. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
11-03-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
North Korea disguises secret missile base as golf course
North Korea is hiding a new launch site for intercontinental ballistic missiles in plain sight, disguising the base as a golf course on the outskirts of Pyongyang. The site was until last year the location of Kim Jong-un's Winter Palace, also known as the Ryokpo residence, in a heavily wooded valley about 20 miles south-east of the capital. However, the palace complex was recently demolished and replaced with a series of new structures, roads and what appear to be golf greens. A closer examination of the facilities using near-infrared images over the course of the construction showed that the greens were reinforced with concrete bases in June, with a thin layer of soil added in August. By November, analysts determined that the grass had taken hold and the site resembled a golf course. But analysts from the Middlesbury Institute's James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies have said that flat areas with concrete bases are ideal launch pads for long-range ballistic missiles and that some of the other buildings at the site are not typically found at a golf course. New roads at the site are wide enough to accommodate the tractor-erector vehicles required to manoeuvre the Hwasong-19 ICBM into position. The 92-foot missile was first successfully launched in October 2024, can carry a nuclear warhead and has a range of at least 9,300 miles, putting all of North America and Europe within range. One of the new buildings at the site is a four-storey building that is estimated to be 118ft high and would be able to accommodate missiles in an upright position. Sam Lair, a member of the research team, told Radio Free Asia: 'While this facility could be used for shorter range systems like the Hwasong-11/KN-23/KN-24 series of missiles, the height of the high-bay building suggests it is also built to allow longer-range systems to operate from it.' He added: 'You would not need a 36 meters [118 feet] high building for just short-range systems'. Behind the building is another structure that has been covered in earth, for greater protection as well as concealment, that could house four launch vehicles. North Korea on Monday launched a volley of ballistic missiles into waters off its west coast, coinciding with the start of the Freedom Shield joint US-South Korean military exercises in the South. The drills will last for 11 days and the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement that its forces were in a 'full readiness posture' and were closely cooperating with US forces.
Asia Times
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Asia Times
N Korea missile puts all of US mainland in nuclear attack range
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.
South China Morning Post
14-02-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Pentagon says North Korean missiles that can hit US may soon be in production
Published: 10:02am, 14 Feb 2025 North Korea may be poised to move into production its intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US, the Pentagon's commander of continental defences told a Senate panel. Kim Jong-un 's regime 'probably can deliver a nuclear payload to targets throughout North America while minimising our ability to provide pre-launch warning due to the shortened launch preparation time lines afforded by its solid-propellant design,' Air Force General Gregory Guillot, the head of US Northern Command, said in written testimony on Thursday to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Guillot cited the October test launch of the Hwasong-19 ICBM with solid fuel, which can be deployed and prepared for launch faster than a missile with liquid propellant. Rhetoric about the new ICBM by North Korea 'suggests Kim is eager to transition his strategic weapons programme from research and development to serial production and fielding, a process that could rapidly expand North Korea's inventory' while narrowing Guillot's confidence in his command's capacity to defend against ballistic missiles, the general said. Questions remain within the American military. When pressed at a Brookings Institution event in November whether the Hwasong-19 test indicated North Korea could pair a nuclear warhead with an ICBM that could withstand the rigours of launch, flight and descent through the atmosphere, Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, said 'we've not yet seen that capability, but we just see continued testing towards that.' 01:34 North Korea launches new hypersonic missile test ahead of Trump's return to White House North Korea launches new hypersonic missile test ahead of Trump's return to White House Guillot's comments are likely to bolster arguments by missile defence advocates to bankroll President Donald Trump's pledge to create an all-encompassing 'Iron Dome' umbrella to protect the US from attack.
