A North Korean missile was launched on Monday morning high above the Sea Of Japan. No matter how dangerous Kim Jong-un's latest exhibition was, it didn't stop National Television from proclaiming it a "shining success."
However, according to U.S. officials, this was an unpleasant surprise. This dangerous weapon with intercontinental range was launched years before any of the Western experts had expected it to.
It was just hours after the allegedly successful test that the intelligence agencies started to count how precise the missile, called Hwasong-14, actually was.
They concluded that North Korea achieved a long-expected turning point, showing the ability to strike the targets thousands of miles away from its shores.
The missile flew much higher than expected
According to the initial Pentagon assessment, North Korea tested the missile that landed in the Sea of Japan, just 600 miles away from the starting point, near the Chinese border. However, both the government and independent experts claim that the rocket was flying much higher than it was originally estimated.
If the missile was flying in the typical route, it would have traveled at the distance of about 4000 miles, which would make Alaska a potential target. Given all that has been said, this missile was marked as an intercontinental ballistic missile, better-known as ICBM.
The Washington Post reports that Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said that if the missile is really an ICBM, "there's no reason to think that is going to be its maximum range."
In any case, this achievement puts North Korea way ahead of the expected development of its ICBM missile.
The Hwasong-14 tested on Monday maybe wouldn't reach the shores of United States, according to experts. They added that there is no proof that North Korea is capable of building a small nuclear warhead to fit on these missiles.
ICBM is the best defense of Kim Jong-un's regime
During the Annunciation of this testing, North Korean officials stated that they now have ICBM missile which will protect them from any kind of the U.S.
attack. On the other hand, American experts claim that The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un planned the ICBM missile to be his shield against any kind of U.S. aggression and it is a powerful weapon that could be pointed in the direction of the U.S. cities.
