North Korean authorities have announced this Thursday the performance “of a test” of a new air defense missile system, a launch carried out the day before with the aim of checking its technical performance and its reliability under operational conditions, according to the state agency KCNA.
Pyongyang maintains that the exercise has served to confirm the performance of the new components integrated into the missile’s “smart multi-guidance” system, as well as to measure the weapon’s capacity to locate, recognize and track targets through its own data processing system.
The test was conducted on the ground by Major General Kim Jong Sik, a member of the Central Military Commission and of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, who was accompanied by senior officials from the Missile Administration and by experts linked to scientific research for national defense.
At the same time, a unit of long-range strategic cruise missiles deployed in the east of the country carried out an attack exercise against a fictitious target that simulated an airport. According to the version spread by KCNA, the implicated subunit completed the operation “satisfactorily” by firing one of these cruise missiles.
North Korean authorities have presented both maneuvers as part of its plans to modernize the Armed Forces, the stated objective of which is “to place combat systems at a high technical level” and to consolidate the “combat reliability of the strategic weapon.”
Official confirmation comes after, on Wednesday, South Korea reported that the North had launched “several missiles” into the Sea of Japan, also called the East Sea, without detailing the exact number or specifying whether any of them corresponded to a ballistic missile.