US military and aviation officials were briefly convinced that a North Korean missile launch earlier this week could pose a threat to the ‘homeland’, CNN reported, but early readings were soon dismissed as inaccurate.
Moments after Pyongyang fired a hypersonic missile off its east coast as part of a weapons test on Monday, US Northern Command, the Northern American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) each responded as if the launch were an attack, scrambling to determine whether the munition could reach US territory.
Pentagon officials “didn’t have a good feel for its capabilities,” a lawmaker briefed on the incident told CNN on Thursday, calling the mishap “ugly.”