WASHINGTON – The White House said on Thursday that North Korea had begun testing a new intercontinental ballistic missile in recent days and that US forces were putting their missile defense units in Asia in a state of “enhanced preparedness” for what they expect to see a new launch. intended to demonstrate the range of the new missile.
In a briefing on Thursday, a senior US official told reporters that in a departure from the past, North Korea had tried to hide the nature of the tests, both of which took place during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They identified the missile as the same one that had rolled north through Pyongyang in October 2020. But until recently, he had not been tested.
It’s not clear whether the tests were timed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to come at a time of maximum distraction in Washington and fears of wider war in Europe. Whatever the reason, the emergence of a new intercontinental missile, ultimately intended to show North Korea could reach American cities, adds to the list of concurrent national security problems facing President Biden. At least two of them involve nuclear weapons in the hands of unpredictable dictators.
The White House said the North had “tried to hide these escalating steps,” suggesting it was not ready to unveil a working version of the missile. The United States, the senior government official said, shared the intelligence with allies and then unveiled the new missile tests — warning of the possibility of a much larger test, barely disguised as a space launch — in an effort to raise awareness and start a call for new sanctions against the government of Mr. Kim.
It is a similar strategy to the one used in November to reveal intelligence about Russia’s build-up along its border with Ukraine.
But those revelations, while uniting NATO, ultimately failed to short-circuit the invasion. On Thursday, several senior US officials said they believed Mr Kim would go ahead as well, in an effort to show that the new missile could hit the United States or its allies — and attract attention.
The two tests conducted in the past 12 days have been noteworthy for several reasons.
They marked the end of a moratorium on intercontinental ballistic missile tests that has been in effect since 2018, after a series of launches over the Pacific with an older version of the North’s intercontinental missiles prompted President Donald J. Trump to threaten the country with ” fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Mr. Trump then turned around and held three face-to-face meetings with Mr. Kim, and the two leaders exchanged admiring letters.
Mr Trump claimed after his first meeting with Mr Kim in Singapore that he had made great strides and that the North would soon begin reducing its armaments. But the diplomatic effort soon fell apart and the North did not give up a single weapon as a result of its diplomacy at the top. It continued to collect nuclear fuel for its arsenal, working on a maneuverable warhead intended to defeat US missile defenses in California and Alaska.
Some experts believe that the same warhead was part of the tests conducted on February 26 and March 4. But US officials declined to answer questions about whether they determined it was a maneuverable, hypersonic warhead designed to evade traditional US missile defenses.
Reports coming from South Korea, along with photos released by the North Koreans, suggest it was most likely a rough version of a maneuverable vehicle.
“This is not what the Chinese are testing,” said Thomas Karako, who leads the missile defense project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and recently published a report on how to combat such weapons. “It’s at the lower end of the technology scale.”
But he noted that US efforts to use missile defense for such weapons have slowed in recent months, partly due to budgetary concerns.
At the time of its public debut in October 2020 — during a North Korean military parade, as noted by the senior government official on Thursday — the weapon made a splash among missile experts.
The Importance of North Korea’s Missile Tests
Vann H. Van Diepen, a former weapons analyst with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Michael Elleman, a missile expert with the International Institute of Strategic Studies, said in an October analysis that the weapon was a mobile missile that appeared until be 85 feet tall. A photo showed the missile’s transporter with 11 huge black bands on each side.
The two experts ruled that the rocket’s engines contained liquid fuel and said that if the first stage contained four engines, the rocket could “basically” deliver up to nearly four tons of payload “to any point in the continental United States.” Thus, its lifting capacity, she added, would be “much greater” than that of the Hwasong-15 — previously North Korea’s most capable ICBM, tested in November 2017.
In an interview, Mr. Van Diepen said he was surprised by Washington’s characterization of the missile as a new ICBM, as it reached peak altitudes of just 385 and 350 miles during its tests this year. In an article he had characterized it as a medium-range missile.
In contrast, the Hwasong-15, according to the North Koreans, flew to an altitude of 2,780 miles on its only test flight.
Mr. Van Diepen said that if Washington’s ICBM analysis was correct for the new missile, it would have been well below its capabilities, perhaps as part of a cautious approach to engine testing. “Maybe it wasn’t fully fueled or they turned the engines off,” he said.
But if more test flights prove it’s the same missile that made its public debut at the military parade in 2020, Mr. Van Diepen said, it would be a terrifying new addition to North Korea’s growing arsenal. For example, its massive lifting power would theoretically allow it to lift multiple warheads at once, greatly increasing its destructive power.
“It’s another potential threat to the homeland,” he said. “But they still have a way to go” to perfect its hundreds of systems and prove it can send a warhead that races easily through space and then experiences the shock of a fiery atmospheric return to a target on the ground.
To date, Mr Van Diepen said, “they have not yet tested any ICBMs at full range, so by definition they have not confirmed that their warheads could survive reentry.”