North Korea says it test-fired hypersonic missile

SpaceWar.com reports: “North Korea said Monday it had successfully test-fired a new ballistic missile tipped with a hypersonic maneuverable warhead, the latest breakthrough in its pursuit of advanced weaponry to threaten South Korean and US targets.

The launch, Pyongyang’s first known weapons test this year and its first ever test of a solid-fuel hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), was detected by Seoul’s military Sunday afternoon.

A short report in the official Korean Central News Agency said that the solid-fuel IRMB was ‘loaded with a hypersonic maneuverable controlled warhead.’

The test was meant to verify ‘the gliding and maneuvering characteristics’ of the warhead and the ‘reliability of newly developed multi-stage high-thrust solid-fuel engines,’ KCNA said.

KCNA said that Sunday’s launch ‘never affected the security of any neighbouring country and had nothing to do with the regional situation.’

But it came just days after Pyongyang staged live-fire exercises near the country’s tense maritime border with South Korea, which prompted counter-exercises and evacuation orders for some South Korean border islands…”

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