SEOUL / WASHINGTON – North Korea currently has up to 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles and could extend its arsenal to 50 ICBM in a decade, according to US Intelligence.
The American Defense Intelligence Agency published on Tuesday assessing threats of nuclear accumulated missiles against the United States.
The agency has published a graph as the Trump administration seeks to build an anti -missile defense system, nicknamed “Golden Dome”, inspired by the “Iron Dome” of Israel.
The graph shows that the main threats of intercontinental ballistic missiles for the United States are China with 400 ICBM, going to 700 by 2035; And Russia with 350, reaching 400 by 2035. Iran is not currently, but should have 60 by 2035.
The agency defines an ICBM as a missile on the ground with a fork exceeding 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles) which flies on a ballistic trajectory and is generally armed with a nuclear warhead or a warhead.
Despite the UN sanctions prohibiting its development of ballistic missiles and Nukes, Pyongyang successfully tested missiles capable of reaching the entire American continent and also carried out six underground nuclear trials.
General Gregory Guillot, commander of the Northern Command and American Norad, testified on Tuesday at the Senate armed services committee. He expressed his concern to the new Hwasong-19 Missile with solid combustion of North Korea, which shortens the preparation time for the launch and increases the threat to North America.
He said that the regime's rhetoric suggests that the North Korean leader Kim Jong Une is impatient to transform his program of strategic weapons of research and development for production and series commissioning, a process that could quickly extend the inventory of North Korea and challenge the defense capacity of American missiles.
The North Korea test dismissed the Hwasong-19 at the end of October, a few days before the American presidential elections won by Donald Trump, in a demonstration of what chief Kim Jong one declared that he was his determination to “counter” his rivals and strengthen his nuclear forces.
It was the seventh ICBM test of North Korea in as many years, and that with the longest flight time to date. Experts hypothesized that the northern missile program was helped by its narrower ties with Russia after Pyongyang sent materials and troops for the war against Ukraine.
North Korea made its first successful launch of an ICBM, the Hwasong-14, which was theoretically capable of reaching parts of the American continent in July 2017. For months later, it tested the larger and more powerful Hwasong-15, which considerably extended the potential beach to cover the continental United States.
After a break in tests in the middle of diplomatic openings by the first Trump administration in 2018 and 2019, North Korea resumed ICBM development with even more advanced systems.
In 2020, he unveiled the massive Hwasong-17, considered capable of transporting several warheads and carried out test launches that focused on payload capacity rather than the range.
Then in 2023, Pyongyang successfully launched the Hwasong-18, its first solid combustion ICBM, which marked a major technological progress.
Solid fuel missiles are faster to deploy and more difficult to detect in advance, making them more survivable and tactically versatile than their predecessors supplied in liquid.
Edited by Mat Pennington.