North Korean nuclear missile could hit US in just 33 minutes, says Chinese study

A team of defence scientists in China claim that an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired from North Korea could hit the United States in just 33 minutes if they fail to intercept it. The team which simulated the attack said that a North Korean missile can hit the central US in 1,997 seconds, or about 33 minutes. The hypothetical missile launch in question used North Korea’s Hwasong-15 which was test fired in 2017, reported the South China Morning Post.

The study published in the Chinese-language journal Modern Defense Technology said that if a Hwasong-15 missile were to be fired from Sunchon, a city in central North Korea’s South Pyongan province, a likely target would be the central US state of Missouri’s city of Columbia. The US missile defence headquarters would receive an alert about 20 seconds later, said the study as per SCMP.

Subsequently, the first batch of intercepting missiles from the US would take off within 11 minutes from Fort Greely in Alaska and another would be launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, that is if the first wave of interceptors wereto fail. The study also suggested that there were gaps in Washington’s nuclear defence network like the “kill chain” system which would have difficulty in identifying and defending against an attack whichcould be used against them.

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The two-stage, nuclear-capable missile with an effective range of 13,000 km is “sufficient to hit the entire US homeland” said Tang Yuyan of the Beijing Institute of Electronic System Engineering who also led the research in question. “If North Korea were to fire a nuclear-armed ICBM at the United States, we cannot be sure that our missile defence system would prevent it,” said Frederick K. Lamb, a Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois to CNN.

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