The “very weighty test” North Korea announced this week has spurred speculation that it was a ground test of a “large, solid-fuel rocket motor designed for a notional intercontinental ballistic missile,” according to a North Korea monitoring site.
“North Korea’s claim that the test was special suggests that perhaps a new engine design was fired,” wrote Michael Elleman in the analysis site 38 North. “What that engine might be is anybody’s guess.”
The test “could set a 2020 timeline for a North Korean ICBM test, validating new capabilities for increased reliability to strike the United States of America with a nuclear weapon,” writes Riki Ellison, of the independent Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.
Such a test would be ill-advised, Ellison argues.
“North Korea putting the American population at nuclear risk during a presidential election year, with a president running for reelection, is madness,” Ellison writes. Test launching an ICBM “would be a disastrous decision that even China or Russia could not help North Korea recover from.”
[Read more: North Korea warns ‘erratic old man’ Trump that it has ‘nothing more to lose’]
The U.S. intelligence community is monitoring closely, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday.
“It’s another thing that we watch because it reduces our warnings if you will, but we have very good intelligence on North Korea,” Esper said in reference to solid fuel rockets. “We work closely with our partners, the South Koreans, who are very capable allies as well.”
The answer eventually will reveal itself, Elleman said.
“Regardless of what North Korea may have tested,” Ellison wrote, “it seems likely that we will soon find out when either a new ballistic missile or satellite launch vehicle is fired in the coming months.”
Read more from our senior writer on defense and national security in today’s edition of Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense.
