The recent launch demonstrates North Korea’s ability to quickly and secretly prepare missiles for launch.<\/b>
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sharply condemned the launches, which came as the United States and its ally South Korea were conducting joint military drills, calling them a \u201cnew threat\u201d from North Korea.
Although North Korea vowed in January to soon test an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U. S. mainland, analysts said the latest missiles launches appeared to be of extended-range Scuds capable of traveling around 1,000 km.
But the launch of several missiles in quick succession without detection was still seen by analysts as a significant step forward for the regime\u2019s missile capabilities.
\u201cThis was pretty much a major development because it shows their capability of moving these missiles, fueling, and firing in a short amount of time,\u201d Hunt said.
Hunt also noted that the missiles were fired with enough accuracy for three of them to land close together in the sea.
\u201cFor them to all hit at pretty much a close grouping, that proves it wasn\u2019t just a random splashdown because even a slight skewing in one direction can make it go off course by miles and miles,\u201d he said.
\u201cThis is pretty impressive that they did a four-missile launch and that they managed to get three of those to land in a pretty close grouping.\u201d
Hunt said Pyongyang could now be expected to concentrate on developing solid-fuel missiles, which can be deployed much more rapidly as they don\u2019t require fueling. North Korea carried out a test of a solid-fuel engine at the same launch site in April, and last month fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile that is believed to have relied on solid fuel.
\u201cThat\u2019s why the fact they are now moving to fuel these solid state missiles is very critical because they\u2019ve now removed that [time element] from the equation and they can now rapidly do surprise launches with very little warning.\u201d<\/p>\n