Thread by @ArmsControlWonk

North Korea tested a 1500 km-range cruise missile, which is capable of delivering a nuclear or conventional warhead against targets throughout South Korea and Japan. A short thread.

https://twitter.com/YonhapNews/status/1437162225274273794

Kim Jong Un, in January, announced that North Korea had developed "intermediate-range cruise missiles" during his speech to the Worker's Party Congress. As a result, all the DPRK watchers I know had "LACM test" on their 2021 bingo cards.

At the time, Kim's remark caused a lot of us to reassess some launchers we saw at the October 2020 and January 2021 parades. The system tested looks a bit different from the one in the parade. One difference of several: The system tested today had five canisters instead of four.

The timing of the test is easy to understand. The US and South Korea conducted a series of military drills in August. When we practice attacking them, they practice nuking us. The North Koreans were pretty noisy about this.

Kim Yo Jong was direct. She described the US-ROK exercises as having an "aggressive nature as they are a war rehearsal and preliminary nuclear war exercise" said and that they would "counter the US on the principle of power for power ..."
kkfonline.com/2021/08/11/kim…

Kim Yong Chol was even more direct a couple of days later. I am not sure what else he could have said or done short of sticking his arms out like wings and pretending to be a cruise missile in flight ...

A an intermediate-range land-attack cruise missile is a pretty serious capability for North Korea. This is another system that is designed to fly under missile defense radars or around them.

Fun fact: The UNSCRs on North Korea only cover ballistic missiles! That's not because ballistic missiles are somehow more threatening than cruise missiles. It's because the architects of the resolutions lacked the imagination of Kim Jong Un and his Academy of Defense Sciences.

For some reason, it's always very hard to get people to take cruise missile proliferation seriously. Well, here we are! Maybe this will do it? Dennis Gormley passed away recently, but if he were with us he'd say "I told you so."
usni.org/press/books/mi…