Confirming a Friday report by David Wright, physicist and co-director of the UCS Global Security Program, that the newest North Korean ICBM - which on Friday night flew for 45 minutes, reaching an altitude of up to 3,725 kilometers and traveled just under 1,000 kilometers before landing in Japan waters - can strike half the major metro areas on the continental US, overnight North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un said that “we have demonstrated our ability to fire our intercontinental ballistic rocket at any time and place and that the entire U.S. territory is within our shooting range.”
Quoted by the Korean Central News Agency, he also expressed his “great satisfaction” with the ICBM test - the country's second after an earlier test on July 4 - which reaffirmed that the missile was able to deliver a “large-sized, heavy nuclear warhead" to the United States. The test was part of the "final verification" of the Hwasong-14 missile’s technical capabilities, including its maximum range.
As a reminder, Wright's calculations showed that the ICBM could have a range 10,400 km (6,500 miles), not taking into account the Earth’s rotation, which if added would increase the range of missiles fired eastward. And, calculating the range of the missile in the direction of some major US cities gives the approximate results in Table 1, which showed that Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago appear to be well within range of this missile, and that Boston and New York may be just within range while Washington, D.C. is just out of range.
Credit to Zero Hedge
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