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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is moving to synchronize the moving parts of its strategic deterrent, revealing this week that Monday’s test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile was accompanied by a new missile-launch exercise.
The exercises introduce a new element into the threat posed by Pyongyang to the U.S. and its regional allies. No force of nuclear-armed missiles is effective without a complex range of related capabilities and assets, both on the ground and in the sky.
All need to be not only generated, but also field-tested.
The state news reports Tuesday broadcast the now-familiar images of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on a viewing stand, alongside his teenage daughter Kim Ju-ae, watching the missile soar over frosted paddy fields. North Korean soldiers, muffled up in winter gear, can be seen fist-pumping in front of laptops as they monitored the launch.
The Hwasong-18 ICBM reached an altitude of 4,050 miles and flew 620 miles before safely splashing in the Sea of Japan off Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.
After analyzing that data, as well as the weapon’s flight time and its angle of launch, officials in Japan announced that the Hwasong-18 fired on Monday had the ability to strike anywhere in the mainland U.S.
That is not a new capability: North Korea has possessed the ability to hit the continental U.S. since 2017. And the solid-fuel Hwasong-18 is not a new weapon: Previous missiles in that class were test-fired in April and July.
What was new on Monday were the reports of related exercises. North Korea’s latest launch is “the first time we’ve seen an ICBM ‘launching drill,’” Jenny Town, director of the influential 38NorthNK website, wrote on social media.
A key advantage of a solid-fuel ballistic missile is pre-launch survivability. Unlike a liquid-fuel missile, it does not need to be fueled in the open, where it is vulnerable to an adversary’s preemptive strike.
But even a solid-fuel ICBM, mounted on a giant transporter-erector-launch vehicle, must be rolled out of cover — a bunker, tunnel, warehouse or even from under a bridge — before being elevated and fired. Moreover, coded signals, target data and launch codes need to be sent to the deployed missile crew. Hence, the need for drilling of related skills.
Moreover, an ICBM force needs targeting intelligence. North Korea now has that, courtesy of its apparently successful launch of its first spy satellite in November. Even so, questions still hang over the viability of North Korea’s reentry vehicle — the protected warhead that re-enters the atmosphere — and its missile guidance systems.
Monday’s launch drills had another motivation — countering Seoul and Washington.
“Beyond developmental testing, the drill was posed as showing ‘overwhelming’ ‘counteraction’ of its strategic forces” to South Korea-U.S. drills and consultations, Ms. Town noted, referring to the language used in the North Korean official press accounts.
Mr. Kim himself, in comments Tuesday carried by the official KCNA news agency, said the latest test demonstrated how North Korea could respond if the U.S. were to make “a wrong decision against it.”
Mr. Kim stressed the need to “never overlook all the reckless and irresponsible military threats of the enemies … and to strongly counter them with more offensive actions,” the North Korean report said.
In recent years, the strategic competition between North Korea on the one hand, and South Korea and the United States, on the other, has largely manifested itself in missile launches versus joint military drills — and vice versa.
It is a dynamic backed up by bellicose rhetoric and stern warnings. An additional component is the deployment, to South Korea, of high-profile U.S. assets such as bombers, submarines and aircraft carriers.
On Sunday, the day before the ICBM launch, the U.S. nuclear-capable cruise missile submarine USS Missouri had docked in South Korea. On Tuesday, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington announced that they had activated a trilateral system to share data on North Korean missile launches, while also establishing a multiyear program of joint exercises.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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