North Korea's new Hwasong-15 missile: What the photos show

North Korea has test-fired a brand new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which experts said shows a major advance in technology and threat.
Photos of the Hwasong-15 released Thursday by North Korean state media showed a large, tall missile that appears to be significantly wider than the Hwasong-14, previously Pyongyang's most-advanced missile, which was launched over Japan twice in July.
"They wanted (to be able) to hit all of the US and they wanted something big to hit it with," said David Schmerler, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS). "This seems on the surface level to be that missile."

Experts have been analyzing and studying the images since their release, so what can we learn from them about North Korea's new weapon?

It's really big
"This isn't just a big missile for North Korea this is a big missile in general," Michael Duitsman, also research associate at CNS, told CNN. "There are not a lot of countries who could build a missile this big and have it work."
Schmerler said it was "a lot bigger width wise, especially the second-stage, than the previous ICBM."
ICBMs use multiple stages, each containing its own engines and propellant, to carry their payloads up into space, around the earth, and then down towards their target

While North Korea has demonstrated significant potential range in previous missile tests, some experts have cast doubt on whether the same distance could be achieved by a rocket carrying a heavy nuclear warhead.

Pyongyang seemed to clap back at those skeptics in a statement after Wednesday's launch, which said the Hwasong-15 was "capable of carrying a super-heavy nuclear warhead."
"This system has much greater advantages in its tactical and technological specifications and technical characteristics than (the) Hwasong-14," a government statement said.

While Schmerler cautioned that it was "hard to look at something and know there's a heavy object" on top of it, he said North Korea's claims should be taken seriously and Wednesday's test likely was conducted with a dummy warhead equivalent in weight to a nuclear bomb.
"They're going to try to maximize the amount of (information) you can get out of each test," he said. "They're not going to launch something for the sake of it, it makes much more sense for them to try and field a realistic decoy payload."
Continue Reading: North Korea's new Hwasong-15 missile: What the photos show

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