Into the Wild Blue Yonder and Back Again

"Cruise missiles are almost like little airplanes, they can be very accurate, they can turn corners."

"They can go into valleys where radars would not see them easily."

"It would be a much more difficult problem for South Korea and Japan to monitor."

"[The missiles represent] another significant milestone for North Korea's nuclear program."

Melissa Hanham, Centre for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University

"This would be the first cruise missile in North Korea to be explicitly designated a 'strategic' role."

"This is a common euphemism for a nuclear-capable system."

Ankit Panda, senior fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

North Korean state media released these images of the new cruise missile   KCNA

 

It was inevitable. North Korea's ongoing research and development of cruise missiles has rewarded the country's military and its cheerleader Kim Jong-un with the success they've been anxious to achieve, despite the more moderate tone Mr.Kim has taken in the past several years, ratcheting down his bellicose threats to neighbours and the West, either mellowing with age, or silently carrying his big stick. 

Pyongyong now points proudly to the missile it fired on the weekend achieving 1,500 km/h, remaining aloft for over two hours in flight over its own waters. A "strategic weapon of great significance", was the pronouncement. A spkesperson for the White House announced: "Our position has not changed when it comes to North Korea, we remain prepared to engage", following, it should be noted, the footsteps of former President Trump, whose overtures and meetings with Kim may well have been responsible for that descending monologue of paranoia and defence. 

According to the regime's proud boast, the new missiles, in development for several years, flew "along an oval and pattern-8 flight orbits", hitting targets. For the present, it remains unsettled whether Pyongyang developed the technology for miniaturized warheads to be carried on a cruise missile, but that in fact, is the general idea of both. The Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed images of a missile fired out of a tube on a launch vehicle, travelling horizontally.

In the opinion of experts, this represents an advance in North Korea's capability enabling it to avoid South Korean and Japanese defence systems. Although under international sanctions over its ballistic missil and nuclear weapons programs, North Korea has not been banned from developing cruise missiles.