WASHINGTON: North Korea’s latest rocket launch saw it shoot an intercontinental ballistic missile higher than ever before, prompting US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to warn that Pyongyang could soon threaten “everywhere in the world.” The worrying assessment once again calls into question America’s anti-missile capabilities, and whether
WASHINGTON: North Korea’s latest rocket launch saw it shoot an intercontinental ballistic missile higher than ever before, prompting US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to warn that Pyongyang could soon threaten “everywhere in the world.”
The worrying assessment once again calls into question America’s anti-missile capabilities, and whether it and its allies can protect themselves from the threat of a nuclear-tipped ICBM.
HOW HIGH?
Defense officials did not elaborate on Mattis’s remark about the missile’s elevation, but on Jul 4, in a test that Kim Jong-Un called a gift for the “American bastards,” a North Korean rocket soared to an altitude of 2,802 kilometers and flew 933 kilometers.
According to David Wright, a co-director and senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, news reports the missile reached more than 4,500 kilometers in altitude would give it a massive range.
“If these numbers are correct, then if flown on a standard trajectory rather than this lofted trajectory, this missile would have a range of more than 13,000 kilometers,” Wright wrote on his organization’s blog.
“Such a missile would have more than enough range to reach Washington, DC, and in fact any part of the continental United States.”
After the Jul 4 launch, experts had said Alaska was in range, so the latest test marks a dramatic and rapid increase in North Korea’s potential reach.
