Hawaii, Alaska within reach of North Korean missile

The defense minister of South Korea and a missile expert have said that North Korea’s first flight test of an intercontinental ballistic missile potentially places Hawaii within range of an attack.

North Korean media reported that the Hwasong-14 successfully test fired on Tuesday reached an altitude of 1,741 miles before landing in the Sea of Japan 580 miles from the launch site.

The Defense Department said it tracked the missile for 37 minutes — the longest flight time for any ballistic missile launched by North Korea to date. The ICBM was fired from Banghyon Airfield about 62 miles from Pyongyang.

The flight test, which occurred at 2:40 p.m. Monday Hawaii time, was a so-called “lofted” launch at a steep angle to keep the missile from overflying other countries — translating into a potential range of 4,163 to 4,970 miles in a standard trajectory, according to John Schilling, an aerospace engineer and former contractor for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Propulsion Directorate.

Hawaii is about 4,765 miles from Pyongyang.

“Fired from North Korea, it probably couldn’t reach the contiguous United States, but Hawaii and Alaska would be within reach,” Schilling said on the website 38 North (38north.org), which is devoted to analysis of North Korea.

South Korea’s Defense Minister, Han Min-koo, told that country’s National Assembly that the ICBM, if launched on a standard trajectory, has enough range to hit Alaska and possibly Hawaii, The New York Times reported.

“We hadn’t expected this to happen this soon,” Schilling said of the apparently successful test. “However, it will probably require another year or two of development before the missile can reliably and accurately hit high-value continental U.S. targets, particularly if fired under wartime conditions. For now, it is a more uncertain threat.”

North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test launch in his belief that the “protracted showdown with the U.S. imperialists has reached its final phase,” and that it was time for the North to “demonstrate its mettle” to the United States.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said the ICBM test “further demonstrates the extremely dangerous and growing threat that North Korea poses to Hawaii, Alaska, and the mainland United States.”

“For the past 15 years, our leaders have let the people of Hawaii and our country down, allowing the situation in North Korea to worsen to this point of crisis where we are left with nothing but bad options,” the Hawaii Democrat said in a news release. “We must ensure we are able to defend against North Korea’s threat with cutting- edge missile defense technologies, but this is not enough.”

The United States also must pursue “serious diplomatic efforts” to de-escalate and ultimately denuclearize North Korea, she said. U.S. leaders need to understand that Kim maintains a tight grip on North Korea’s nuclear weapons as a deterrent against regime change.

“The Trump Administration would be far more credible in finding a diplomatic solution with North Korea if we weren’t currently waging a regime change war in Syria, and contemplating a regime change war in Iran,” Gabbard said.

Schilling said the United States thought that it would have until perhaps early 2020 to prepare for a North Korean ICBM capability, “but it turns out they were working on a different timetable.”

“That has serious strategic, diplomatic and political implications for the very near future,” he added. “For instance, starting today, U.S. military commanders cannot be 100 percent certain that a war on the Korean peninsula won’t stretch at least as far as Hawaii or Alaska.”