Hwasong-19 Unveiled: How North Korea’s Super-Large ICBM Poses New Threats to the U.S. Mainland

<p >North Korea has unveiled a new class of intercontinental range ballistic missile, which was f<a href=" target="_blank">irst test launched</a> on October 31 and flew to an altitude of over 7000 kilometres. The new Hwasong-19 ICBM is by far the largest road mobile missile class in the world, and is significantly larger than the <a href=" target="_blank">already massive Hwasong-17</a> unveiled in 2020 which previously held this title. The new missile’s lofted trajectory demonstrated a range of over 15,000 kilometres, allowing it t strike targets across the United States mainland and far beyond. It has been speculated that North Korea may be developing an ICBM with an unprecedentedly long-range, allowing it to strike the United States from across its southern border over a much longer flight trajectory that entirely skips past <a href=" target="_blank">existing missile defences</a> concentrated in the north. While the Hwasong-17 was already thought to be capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads across the American mainland, the Hwasong-19 is expected to have a much greater warhead capacity. This could be particularly important as North Korea <a href=" target="_blank">accelerates the production </a>of new nuclear warheads.  </p><p ><img src=" title="Hwasong-19 First Launch"></p><p >Alongside its sheer size, the Hwasong-19 is notably only North Korea’s second ICBM to use a solid fuel composite, with the much smaller Hwasong-18 <a href=" flown from April 2023</a> having been the first. Much like the Hwasong-18, the Hwasong-19 was launched from a massive canister mounted on a transporter erector launcher, which it appears in footage released by state media to have exited with a soft launch system. Solid fuel missiles can be stored fully fuelled, and accordingly have much shorter launch times, allowing them to pose much greater challenges to U.S. and other adversary air units seeking to neutralise them. The Hwasong-19 is the fifth ICBM class to have been test flown by North Korea, following the relatively basic Hwasong-14 and its larger counterpart the Hwasong-15 which began test flights<a href=" in July</a> and <a href=" 2017</a>, as well as the newer Hwasong-17 and Hwasong-18. </p><p ><img src=" title="Hwasong-19 First Launch"></p><p >Alongside progress in developing ICBMs, North Korea has made significant progress in developing hypersonic glide vehicles, with these first tested in September 2021, and in April 2024 demonstrating particularly advanced capabilities when <a href=" target="_blank">integrated onto the Hwasong-16B </a>intermediate range ballistic missile. This progress has raised the significant possibility that ICBMs like the Hwasong-19 could in future also carry hypersonic glide vehicles, which would further significantly improve their ability to bypass enemy missile defences while reducing the warning time for the American mainland after launch. This would follow Russia’s own integration of <a href=" target="_blank">Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles</a> onto its own ICBMs, including the new RS-28 Sarmat, with North Korea potentially set to become the second country to do so. The sheer size of the Hwasong-19 has raised questions regarding how mobile it may be on the country’s road network, with its unprecedentedly large 30 meter transporter erector launcher potentially being unwieldy when off major highways. The possibility remains that the missile could be developed into the country’s first silo-based ICBM, and otherwise that some road networks could be expanded specifically to acommodate the missiles.</p>