ANALYSIS | North Korea says it tested a hypersonic missile. If true, it could change the military equation in East Asia

Hong Kong (CNN) – The hypersonic missile that North Korea claims to have tested on Tuesday has the potential to be one of the world’s fastest and most accurate weapons, and could be equipped with a nuclear warhead, experts say.

While the exact specifications of North Korea’s Hwasong-8 hypersonic missile are not yet known, missiles with hypersonic glide vehicles can theoretically fly as fast as 20 times the speed of sound and can be highly maneuverable in flight, making them highly maneuverable. makes it almost impossible to tear down, according to experts.

If North Korea can successfully produce and deploy a hypersonic weapon, analysts say that could change the military equation in the region.

“If it is true, it means that the current missile defense systems of South Korea and Japan become almost powerless,” said Lionel Fatton, an assistant professor at Webster University in Switzerland and a researcher at Meiji University in Japan.

Those systems are designed for defense against ballistic missiles, which descend on their targets from altitudes much higher than hypersonic ones.

“A hypersonic missile that can defeat advanced missile defense systems is a game changer if a nuclear warhead is attached to it,” said Drew Thompson, former US Department of Defense official and visiting principal investigator at the School of Defense. Lee Kuan Yew of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. But he cautioned, “that’s a big conditional yes. Having it and wanting it are not the same.”

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), run by the Pyongyang state, said developing the “strategic” weapon was one of the five “priority tasks of the five-year plan” for the country’s defense.

Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endownment for International Peace, said on Twitter that North Korea’s use of the term “strategic” when describing the weapon implies a nuclear warhead capability.

North Korea has detonated six nuclear devices and is believed to have several nuclear warheads, according to Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda, nuclear experts with the Federation of American Scientists. But they note that there is no certainty that Pyongyang was able to successfully place a nuclear warhead on a missile and reach its target.

The KCNA report said Tuesday’s test was the first for the hypersonic missile, and that it was successful.

“National defense scientists confirmed the missile’s navigation control and stability in the active section and also its technical specifications, including the guidance maneuverability and glide flight characteristics of the separate hypersonic sliding warhead,” KCNA said.

Western analysts who looked at the only image North Korea released from Tuesday’s test say the weapon had the hallmark of a hypersonic impulse slide weapon.

After analyzing the launch data, the South Korean armed forces said the missile appears to be in an early stage of development, and it will be some time before it can be deployed.

In a statement sent to reporters, the South Korean Joint Chief of Staff said the North’s missiles can still be detected and intercepted with joint South Korean-US military assets.

How a hypersonic slide gun works

Like ballistic missiles, hypersonic glide weapons are launched by rockets high in the atmosphere. But while a ballistic missile warhead is largely propelled by gravity once it begins to descend to its target from a height of up to 1,000 kilometers, hypersonics dive back to Earth before flattening its flight path, flying just tens of kilometers above the ground, according to a hypersonic report from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The weapon then uses internal navigation devices to make heading corrections and keep it on target while traveling up to 12 times the speed of sound, according to the report.

Roderick Lee, director of research at American Air University’s China Aerospace Studies Institute, said that hypersonics’ lower-altitude flight paths mean they stay below radars for longer periods.

“That complicates things a lot for the defender,” added Lee.

Only two countries, Russia and China, are believed to have deployable hypersonic missiles.

In December 2019, Russia said that its hypersonic missile system, known as the Avangard, had entered service. In a speech to the Russian Parliament in 2018, President Vladimir Putin called the Avangard system “virtually invulnerable” to Western air defenses.

In January 2020, Putin oversaw tests of a second hypersonic system, the Kinzhal, off the Crimea.

At a 2019 military parade, China displayed its DF-17 missile, which it can use to deploy a hypersonic glide vehicle. A report from the Missile Defense Project in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quoting US defense officials, says that the DF-17 can launch a warhead within a few meters of its intended target at a range of up to 2,500 kilometers.

According to a report this month from the Arms Control Association (ACA) in Washington, the United States is working on eight types of hypersonic weapons. And the armed forces’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said this week that it had successfully tested a hypersonic weapon in flight a week earlier.

In April, the Pentagon said it failed a US test of a hypersonic missile.

The ACA report says that hypersonics are contributing to “a burgeoning arms race in which all sides rush the deployment of new weapons so that it is not perceived that they are lagging behind the others in the domain of new technologies. involved “.

Carnegie Endowment expert Panda wrote on Twitter: “Missile proliferation in Asia is happening faster than I can write about missile proliferation in Asia.”

‘A Little Bomb’ in North Korea’s Report

While the hypersonic velocities of North Korea’s weapon made major headlines Wednesday morning, missile experts pointed out something sinister in the KCNA report: “a little bomb,” as Jeffery Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, he wrote in a tweet.

The report said North Korea used a “missile fuel vial,” meaning the missiles are fueled at the factory, not after being deployed to the field, Lewis said.

“If the DPRK feeds the missiles at the factory, the military units don’t have to waste time doing it on the ground when the US Air Force is doing its best to kill them … A big step for the DPRK,” he tweeted Lewis.

Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said the fuel canister can extend the time missiles can spend deployed, waiting for launch.

“It appears that North Korea is trying to overcome the disadvantages of pre-launch injection of liquid fuel,” which has been the predominant fuel in North Korean missiles, he added.

US military officials said Tuesday’s launch did not pose “an immediate threat to US personnel or territory, or to our allies,” but did highlight “the destabilizing impact of (North Korea’s) illicit weapons program.”

Pyongyang is prohibited from testing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons under international law. Previous evidence of this kind has been met with international shame and United Nations Security Council sanctions.

North Korea steps up testing

The missile test was North Korea’s third this month.

In the first, Pyongyang said it tested long-range cruise missiles for two days, on September 11 and 12. Then on September 16, both North and South Korea tested ballistic missiles, exponentially increasing tensions in what is already one of the most volatile regions on the planet.

On Tuesday, news of North Korea’s test came just before Pyongyang’s representative to the United Nations, Kim Song, addressed the UN General Assembly in New York, where he lamented the division between North Korea. and South Korea and criticized the presence of the United States in the region.

Kim accused the United States of “antagonizing” his country with military exercises in the region, saying that Pyongyang would be “prepared to respond willingly at any time” to friendly proposals from Washington.

Meanwhile, he said, “as everyone knows, and as the United States is so concerned, of course, powerful offensive means are included in our deterrence of war.”

It remains to be seen whether a hypersonic missile will be part of that North Korean deterrent.

“If they can develop a reliable nuclear warhead that is small enough to be launched by a missile, and they can test the warhead and missile, then they have shown that they have a credible capability,” said Thompson, the Singapore researcher.

For now, he is skeptical.

“(A) hypersonic system in North Korea seems like a fantasy to me right now,” Thompson said.

But Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said Pyongyang’s hypersonic missile may not need to be as accurate as those potentially deployed by other nations.

“If Pyongyang manages to place a nuclear warhead even in a rudimentary hypersonic, it would be a dangerous weapon because it would not have to be extremely precise to threaten the nearby metropolis of Seoul,” he said.

CNN’s Yoonjung Seo and Gawon Bae contributed to this report.