Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/SEOUL: North Korea showcased its missile production muscle during the nighttime parade, displaying more intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) than ever before and hinting at developing a new solid-fuel weapon.
State news agency KCNA said that North Korea held the widely anticipated nighttime military parade in Pyongyang on Wednesday to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of its military.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended the parade with his daughter, who saw the playing of a possible future leadership role in the hereditary dictatorship.
North Korea shows nuclear millies
The ICBMs showed North Korea’s “greatest” nuclear millies strike capability, KCNA news agency said, adding that the parade featured tactical nuclear units.
Imagery released by state media showed as well as 11 Hwasong-17s, North Korea’s largest ICBMs, which are suspected of having the range to strike nearly anywhere in the globe with a nuclear warhead.
“This is cumulatively more ICBM launchers than we have ever seen before at a North Korean parade,” Ankit Panda of the United States (US) based Carnegie Endowment for Global Peace said on Twitter.
He also said that if such ICBMs are equipped with multiple warheads, that number could be enough to saturate existing United States missile defense systems.
The Hwasong-17 was first tested the previous year.
