North Korea can hit all of US with its new ICBM. Deal with it

Enlarge / Deal with it. (credit: Korean Central News Service / Sean Gallagher)

North Korea's latest intercontinental ballistic missile test demonstrates a number of things that are not good news for anyone hoping to prevent the country from becoming a global nuclear power. The missile, called the Hwasong-15, flew high enough (more than 4,400 kilometers, or 2,700 miles-more than 10 times the altitude of the International Space Station) and long enough (54 minutes) to demonstrate that it was capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to anywhere in the United States.

The Hwasong-15 is essentially equivalent to the US' Titan II. It is an immense, liquid-fueled missile, much larger than North Korea's Hwasong-14 ICBM. The 15 appears to use two engines on its first stage as well as an enlarged second stage, according to Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul. While it only flew about 960 kilometers (600 miles) over the ground, David Wright, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, estimated the Hwasong-15 would have a range of 8,100 miles (13,000 kilometers) in normal flight.

"We do not know how heavy a payload this missile carried, but given the increase in range, it seems likely that it carried a very light mock warhead," Wright said in a UCS blog post. "If true, that means it would be incapable of carrying a nuclear warhead to this long distance, since such a warhead would be much heavier."

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