The Biden Administration says recent flights of missiles by North Korea were the regime testing out a new intercontinental ballistic missile, one that could possibly reliably hit the United States, the Associated Press reports.
Officials in the administration war that the tests could be a prelude to a full-scale test of the missile to check its range and guidance system. The previous tests–North Korea has fired nine rockets so far this year–only went a few hundred miles and splashed into the sea off Japan or Korea’s northern coast.
The missile was debuted during a military parade in 2020. North Korea has claimed that recent test firing were to test a new camera it’s developed for a future satellite.