North Korea says it tested a cluster bomb warhead for its tactical missiles and will field four types this year

KCNA said the Missile Administration ran the test on October 31 to check the warhead's fit for combat and its power. General Kim Jong Sik, a member of the ruling party's Central Military Commission, oversaw it. Kim Jong Un was not reported present. The institutes under the administration said the Standard Type 2 warhead can turn a target area of 12 to 13 hectares into ashes at its highest density power. Twelve to 13 hectares is roughly 30 acres, an area a single warhead is claimed to cover by scattering submunitions over it. That figure is Pyongyang's own claim, stated in its own language, and no outside assessment of the test's damage area was published on Sunday.

The missile itself was not named by KCNA. Analysts in Seoul who studied the photographs said it appeared to be from the Hwasong 11 family of short range ballistic missiles, the North's counterpart to the American ATACMS, though they did not agree on the exact variant. South Korea's Joint Chiefs said a missile was fired toward the Yellow Sea from around Chongju in the north west, that the launch had been tracked beforehand with the United States, and that the military had not announced it on the day.

Cluster munitions are banned by treaty in much of the world because the bomblets they scatter can lie unexploded and kill long after a battle. North Korea, South Korea and the United States are not parties to that treaty. The North tested a cluster warhead in April, with Kim Jong Un watching, and Saturday's test is the second announced this year. Fielding four types to front line units by the end of December, as the Missile Administration's director promised, would move the weapon from experiment to inventory.