Voice of America News reports: “Western experts analyzing North Korea’s latest intercontinental ballistic missile tests are watching to see whether Pyongyang will follow up by firing an ICBM into the Pacific Ocean on a flat trajectory more like a real attack on the United States.

Such a test would be intended to demonstrate North Korea’s ability to reach the mainland United States with a nuclear weapon as well as to gauge whether the Biden administration would try to intercept it, the experts told VOA’s Korean service.

North Korea said it launched a Hwasong-17 ICBM on March 16 to ‘give a stronger warning’ to the U.S. and South Korea, saying those nations were escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula with large-scale military drills. The allies were three days into their 11-day Freedom Shield live exercises that Pyongyang views as a rehearsal for an invasion.

The Hwasong-17 was fired into space on a trajectory that sent it to over 6,000 kilometers in altitude and about 1,000 kilometers in distance before it splashed into the waters off North Korea’s eastern coast, according to state media…”