N. Korea simulates nuclear air burst to attack S. Korea
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Loading... - Prvoslav Gutic
- 20 Mar 2023
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This photo, carried by North Korea`s official Korean Central News Agency on March 20, 2023, shows the North conducting military drills simulating a tactical nuclear counterattack against its enemies. (Yonhap)
North Korea said it conducted a live-fire drill simulating attacks on South Korea by exploding a tactical nuclear weapon mounted on a missile in the air, ramping up its nuclear saber-rattling amid the ongoing defense-oriented Freedom Shied military exercise being conducted between South Korea and the United States.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un guided the two-day “joint tactical drills simulating a nuclear counterattack by units operating tactical nuclear weapons” on Saturday and Sunday, North Korean state media reported Monday in a Korean-language dispatch.
The major purpose of the joint drills was to “substantially reinforce the country’s war deterrence and nuclear counterattack capability and make relevant unit master procedures and processes to carry out tactical nuclear attack missions,” according to North Korean state media.
The nuclear drills also aimed to “demonstrate North Korea’s tougher will to take countermeasures and send a stronger warning” to South Korea and the US as they are staging their own military exercises.
North Korea’s tactical nuclear operation units repeatedly practiced procedures to enforce the leadership’s orders to launch nuclear attacks on the first day of the drills. The military units staged a live-fire exercise “simulating launching nuclear attacks on key enemy targets” the next day, state media reported.
North Korean nuclear forces fired a ballistic missile tipped with a mock tactical nuclear weapon able to hit targets in South Korean territory, it said.
But state media notably reported that the “tactical ballistic missile accurately exploded in midair 800 meters above a designated target in the East Sea” after traveling around 800 kilometers, claiming that the test confirmed the “reliability of the operation of nuclear explosion control devices and detonators fitted in a nuclear warhead.”
Yang Uk, a research fellow in national security at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies think tank in Seoul, pointed out that North Korea’s “testing of the air burst intended to maximize destructive power is the country’s threat to attack major South Korean cities” with tactical nuclear bombs. Read More…
