North Korea appears to have tested a missile tipped with a hypersonic weapon that could evade the air defenses of US bases

People watch a news broadcast with file footage of a North Korean missile test at a railway station in Seoul on January 14, 2024. JUNG YEON-JE

• North Korea claimed Monday to have tested a hypersonic glide missile. 
• The missiles are highly manoeuvrable and use a new type of fuel. 
• North Korea is continuing to menace US allies in the region. 

North Korea claims to have successfully tested a solid-fuel missile tipped with a hypersonic weapon that could be used to target US bases and allies in the region.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that North Korea on Sunday for the first time tested a hypersonic glide vehicle that was launched using solid-fuelled engines.

The test was designed to establish “the gliding and maneuvering characteristics” of the warhead and the “reliability of newly developed multi-stage high-thrust solid-fuel engines,” said the state media outlet, according to Agence-France Presse.

Hypersonic missiles are defined as those capable of traveling around five times the speed of sound while making maneuvers, meaning their course is difficult to predict. Russia, China, and the US are believed to have been developing the weapons.

The glide vehicle version of the missiles is fired into the Earth’s atmosphere on boosters, and the missile then detaches and flies unsupported before dipping to its target at an altitude of just a few miles, meaning they’re difficult for radars to pick up.

The core improvement in the new weapon is that it uses solid fuel rather the liquid fuel used in tests of hypersonic weapons in 2022.

It’s easier to conceal and launch solid-fuel missiles so they would be even more difficult to detect and shoot down by air-defense systems for US bases in Guam or Japan or by US allies in the region, say experts.

“These capabilities are much more responsive in a time of crisis,” Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Reuters.

A previous round of North Korean hypersonic missile tests back in 2021 and 2022 prompted concerns that the weapons could be so sophisticated, they would be a potential game changer.

“If true, it means current South Korean and Japanese missile defense systems become close to impotent,” Lionel Fatton, an assistant professor at Webster University in Switzerland and researcher at Meiji University in Japan told CNN in 2021.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has repeatedly menaced the US and its allies in the region, saying earlier in January that he’d “thoroughly annihilate” South Korea and the US if provoked. The US and South Korea have increased joint military exercises in the region.

In recent months North Korea has also drawn closer to Russia, cooperating on a range of military initiatives and providing Russia with ballistic missiles and ammunition for its war in Ukraine.