Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s arsenal has grown rapidly, especially its nuclear program and missile fleet. The expansion of the arsenal has become a growing threat to the United States and allies in the region.
This is what’s in it.
warheads
North Korea has used nuclear weapons as its main negotiating tool and has built more powerful ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The country conducted six increasingly sophisticated underground nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017. The last four took place under Mr. Kim.
By January, North Korea had 40 to 50 nuclear warheads and could produce enough fissile material for six or seven bombs a year, according to an estimate by the Arms Control Association. Mr Kim has also said that his country plans to build a nuclear-powered submarine to deliver nuclear weapons to its opponents in a more covert manner.
Long Range Missiles
In 2017, Mr Kim claimed that his country was capable of carrying out a nuclear attack on the continental United States. North Korea fired its Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15 that year, the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles. It also fired its intermediate-range ballistic missile, Hwasong-12, over Japan, threatening an “envelope” attack around the US territory of Guam.
After 2017, Mr Kim had stopped testing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles but threatened to end his moratorium when talks with the Trump administration collapsed in 2019.
Whether North Korea has mastered the technology needed to send an intercontinental warhead into space and then send it back through Earth’s atmosphere to its target is still unclear. The Hwasong-17, North Korea’s largest known ICBM, was first unveiled at a military parade in October 2020, but had never been tested on Thursday.
More and more advanced missiles
North Korea’s short-range ballistic missile program has made great strides.
When North Korea resumed missile tests in 2019 after the failure of the Kim-Trump talks, the tests included three new solid-fuel missiles, military experts said. Unlike its older rockets that used liquid fuel, these are easier to transport and conceal and take less time to prepare. At least two of those missiles can also perform low-altitude maneuvers, making them more difficult to intercept. The North has also stockpiled thousands of tons of chemical and biological weapons that it can deliver with its missiles.
