SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Monday that recent missile launches were simulating attacks on South Korea and the United States as they conducted “dangerous war drills”. North Korean missiles near its shores.
Last week, as South Korea and the United States conducted six days of air drills that ended Saturday, North Korea tested several missiles, including a failed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and hundreds of artillery shells into the sea. fired.
The North Korean military said the “Vigilant Storm” exercise was “a blatant provocation intended to deliberately increase tensions” and a “dangerous military exercise of a highly offensive nature.”
The North Korean military said it had conducted simulated attacks on air bases, aircraft and major South Korean cities to “pulverize the enemy’s relentless war hysteria”.
The series of missile launches was the largest ever in a single day and came in a year of record missile tests by nuclear-armed North Korea.
South Korean and US officials also said North Korea had made technical preparations to test a nuclear weapon, the first since 2017.
Senior diplomats from the United States, Japan and South Korea spoke by phone on Sunday and condemned recent tests, including the “reckless” launch of a missile that landed on South Korea’s coast last week, according to a statement from the US State Department.
An official with South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Monday that a South Korean ship had recovered debris believed to be part of a North Korean short-range ballistic missile (SRBM). This is the first time a North Korean ballistic missile has landed in South Korean waters.
Officials said a South Korean navy rescue vessel used an underwater probe to retrieve the parts and are analyzing them.
pending claims
North Korea’s military said it fired two “strategic” cruise missiles into waters off South Korea’s Ulsan on November 2.
South Korean officials called the allegations “untrue” and said they were not tracking missiles near them.
Analysts say some of the photos released by North Korean state media appear to be repurposed from a launch earlier this year.
[1/5] A recent North Korean missile test was filmed at an undisclosed location and is depicted in this undated photo composite released November 7, 2022 by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). KCNA via Reuters
The operation included launching two “tactical ballistic missiles with distributed warheads”, testing “special function warheads to paralyze the enemy’s operational command system”, and an “all-out combat sortie” involving 500 fighter aircraft. ‘ was also included. According to a statement provided by the official KCNA news agency.
According to Joseph Dempsey, a defense researcher at the International Institute, the 500 fighters represent nearly all dedicated fighters in North Korea’s inventory. For strategic research.
“[This]500 figure is exaggerated, or at least misleading,” he said in a post on Twitter.
North Korea’s chief of staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) has accused Seoul and Washington of creating a “more destabilizing confrontation” and has taken “sustained, determined, overwhelming and practical military measures”. vowed to counter their training in
“The more persistent the enemy’s provocative military actions continue, the more thoroughly and mercilessly the Korean People’s Army will respond,” the statement said.
new missile?
Photos released by state media appeared to show a new type or subspecies of ICBM that had not been reported before, analysts said.
“Although not explicitly stated in their statement, the design does not match anything seen so far,” said Ankit Panda, a missile expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He suggested that the launch shown may have been a development platform for evaluating missile subsystems, including multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) vehicles.
“This is definitely an ICBM-sized missile,” said Panda.
George William Herbert, an adjunct professor and missile consultant at the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies, said an image shows what appears to be the new nosecone for North Korea’s Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile, which was first tested in 2017. said.
The nosecone has a different shape, a 200- to 300-kiloton nuclear weapon that appeared in state media and was apparently tested in 2017, but looks bigger than it needs to be, he said.
Herbert says this shape is better suited for a single large warhead than for multiple small warheads such as MIRV.
Kim Jong-un calls for the development of both large and small nuclear warheads that can be used for MIRV and tactical weapons.
Reported by Hyonhe Shin and Josh Smith.Editing by Daniel Wallis, Diane Kraft and Jerry Doyle
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