SEOUL, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Nuclear-armed North Korea showed off its missile production muscle during a nighttime parade, state media reported on Thursday, displaying more intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) than ever before. and featured a new solid-fuel weapon.
North Korea held its widely anticipated nighttime military parade in Pyongyang on Wednesday to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of its army, state news agency KCNA said.
Leader Kim Jong Un attended with his daughter, who is seen playing a possible future leadership role in the inherited dictatorship.
The ICBMs demonstrated North Korea’s “greatest” nuclear strike capability, KCNA said, adding that the parade also featured tactical nuclear units.
Images released by state media show as many as 11 Hwasong-17, North Korea’s largest ICBM, which is suspected to have the range to hit almost anywhere in the world with a nuclear warhead.
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“It’s more ICBM launchers than we’ve ever seen in North Korea’s parade,” Ankit Panda of the United States-based Carnegie Endowment said on Twitter.
If such ICBMs were equipped with more warheads, that number could be enough to overwhelm existing US missile defense systems, he added.
The Hwasong-17 was first tested last year.
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The country is ramping up its ballistic missile program, launching larger and more advanced missiles despite United Nations Security Council resolutions and sanctions.
“This time, Kim Jong Un allowed the expansion of North Korea’s tactical and long-range missile forces which speak for themselves,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “The message that Pyongyang wants to send to the whole world, showing its capabilities of deterrence and coercion, will probably come in the form of solid-fuel missile tests and detonation of a miniaturized nuclear device.”
The Hwasong-17s were followed by what some analysts said could be a prototype or mockup of a new solid-fuel ICBM in canister launchers.
The canisterised ICBMs appeared different from those displayed in a 2017 parade, Panda said.
Most of the country’s largest ballistic missiles use liquid fuel, requiring them to be loaded with propellant at their launch site – a time-consuming process.
Developing a solid-fuel ICBM has long been seen as a key goal for the country, as it would make its nuclear missiles more difficult to detect and destroy during a conflict.
It was unclear how close the suspected new missile was to the test. North Korea sometimes displays mockups in parades.
Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Gerry Doyle
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