North Korea releases video of ICBM test for the second time

The Hwasong-14 rocket left the launch pad on July 28.

North Korea successfully tested intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) twice in just July. Experts say that the successful testing of  ICBMs gives North Korea the ability to attack globally, threatening most of its territory.

The Hwasong-14 missile on July 28 flew 998 km away and reached an altitude of 3,700 km before falling into the Sea of Japan.

Difficult to intercept

ICBMs are especially scary because they are difficult to stop after launch.

Intercepting a reentry ICBM warhead is like shooting down a bullet moving at a speed of more than 16,000 km/h with another bullet.

Powerful Hwasong-14 missile.

The US has spent billions of dollars to develop technology to intercept ICBMs, but this process is very slow and expensive.

The military believes that the interception test was conducted in ideal conditions, not close to the reality of the battlefield.

`The test did not prove the effectiveness of the system in practice. GMD still has a lot of work to do before it can become an effective shield against ICBMs,` said physics expert Laura Grego.

Fooling the US missile shield

Military experts discovered that the Hwasong-14 missile was installed with a hollow, conical hood, instead of a solid nose like most previous North Korean missile models.

`ICBMs often use shrouds in cases where they are planned to launch multiple warheads capable of re-entering the atmosphere or multiple decoy warheads,` Schmerler analyzed.

The Hwasong-14 can be equipped with decoys or multiple warheads.

An empty hood can contain multiple spheres that act as dummy warheads.

`Although North Korea has never publicly announced that its missiles are equipped with fake warheads, the cone-shaped hollow cover on the Hwasong-14 shows that this possibility is very high,` expert Schmerler emphasized.