North Korea displayed more intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) than ever before during a nighttime parade on Thursday, state media reported, hinting at a new solid-fuel weapon.
North Korea held its much-anticipated nighttime military parade in Pyongyang on Wednesday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of its army, according to the state news agency KCNA.
Leader Kim Jong Un was accompanied by his daughter, who is seen as a potential future leader of the hereditary dictatorship.
According to KCNA, the ICBMs demonstrated North Korea’s “greatest” nuclear strike capability, and the parade also featured tactical nuclear units.
State media images showed up to 11 Hwasong-17s, North Korea’s largest ICBMs with the range to strike nearly anywhere in the world with a nuclear warhead.
Such ICBMs may have enough warheads, he continued, to overwhelm the current missile defense systems in place in the United States.
The Hwasong-17 had its initial test last year.
Modern Missiles
Despite the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions and sanctions, the nation has continued to improve its ballistic missile program by launching bigger and more sophisticated missiles.
According to Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Seoul’s Ewha University, “Kim Jong Un this time let North Korea’s developing tactical and long-range missile forces speak for themselves.” Solid-fuel missile tests and the explosion of a miniature nuclear weapon are likely to be the means by which Pyongyang communicates with the rest of the world that it is capable of both deterring and coercing.
What some experts believed to be a prototype or mockup of a new solid-fuel ICBM in canister launchers came after the Hwasong-17s.
The ICBMs that were canisterized didn’t look like the ones displayed in a parade in 2017, according to Panda.
The majority of the largest ballistic missiles in the nation employ liquid fuel, which necessitates their time-consuming and laborious propellant loading at the launch location.
As it may make its nuclear missiles more difficult to detect and eliminate during a battle, developing a solid-fuel ICBM has long been regarded as a major objective for the nation.
How soon a test of the alleged new missile might take place is unknown. On occasion, mockups from North Korea have been seen during the parades.
