Seoul, South Korea:

North Korean state media on Friday released images of leader Kim Jong Un supervising tests of a multiple rocket launcher system, a day after Seoul accused Pyongyang of firing a volley of short-range ballistic missiles.

The photos showed Kim, in a brown leather jacket, smiling with uniformed generals as he supervised the simultaneous launch of what appeared to be 18 projectiles.

The test involved “super-large multiple rocket sub-units”, according to a report by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Analysts have suggested the nuclear-armed North could be testing and ramping up production of artillery and cruise missiles before sending them to Russia for use in Ukraine, something the Pentagon said it had confirmed in a report released this week.

Images from the drill showed the 600mm multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), which North Korea has said can be fitted with nuclear warheads.

The exercises were meant to “serve as an occasion in clearly showing what consequences our rivals will face if they provoke us,” the KCNA report said.

The drills showed that the North “will not hesitate to carry out a preemptive attack by invoking the right to self-defence at any time,” it added.

KCNA said the rockets fired had “accurately hit an island target 365 km (226 miles) away”.

On Thursday, South Korea’s military said it had detected the launch of around 10 short-range ballistic missiles.

Seoul’s military also put the range of those missiles at about 350 kilometres (217 miles), while calling the launch a “provocation”.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller condemned the firing of the ballistic missiles — a violation of UN sanctions — as “reckless behavior which poses a grave threat to the Korean Peninsula”.

On Monday, North Korea attempted to put a second spy satellite into orbit, but it ended in a mid-air explosion.

The attempt came just hours after Seoul, Beijing and Tokyo held a rare trilateral summit, where they called for Pyongyang to give up its nukes.

A day later, North Korea sent hundreds of trash-filled balloons across the border, in what it described as retaliation for balloons full of anti-Kim propaganda sent northwards by activists in the South.

Analysts have said North Korea’s rocket launcher systems are capable of hitting Seoul, which is only some 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries.

 Trash balloons 

Yang Moo-jin, president of Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, said Pyongyang’s latest actions, including the trash-filled balloons, were part of an attempt to divert attention away from the satellite launch failure.

North Korea was also “trying to convey a message that the military initiative on the Korean Peninsula belongs to Pyongyang, not South Korea or the United States,” he said.

In a separate KCNA report Friday, North Korea accused Washington of deploying its RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft from Japan to the Korean peninsula earlier this week.

“Other spying aircraft of the US” and South Korea’s air force, “including U-2S and RQ-4B, (engaged) in round-the-clock monitoring and spying on the DPRK, seriously violating its sovereignty and security,” it said, using North Korea’s official name.

“The US and other hostile forces are bound to meet unforeseen disaster for their bluffing and reckless espionage,” the report added.

A new report by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, meanwhile, said an analysis of debris found in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in January confirmed Russia was using North Korean ballistic missiles in its invasion.

The North recently said the country would equip its military with a new 240mm multiple rocket launcher starting this year, adding a “significant change” for the army’s artillery combat capabilities was underway.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The long-awaited first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was called off for at least 24 hours over a technical glitch with the Atlas V rocket that was being readied to launch the new astronaut capsule to orbit on Monday night.

The CST-100 Starliner’s inaugural voyage carrying astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) has been highly anticipated and much-delayed as Boeing scrambles to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for a greater share of lucrative NASA business.

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It comes two years after the gumdrop-shaped capsule completed its first test flight to the orbital laboratory without humans aboard. The Starliner’s first uncrewed flight to the ISS in 2019 ended in failure.

Its latest flight was scrubbed with less than two hours left in the countdown as the capsule stood poised for blastoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop an Atlas V rocket furnished by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture.

The postponement, attributed to an issue with a valve in the Atlas rocket’s second stage, was announced during a live NASA webcast.

It was not immediately clear how long the issue would take to address, but the next available launch windows for the mission are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights.

The two-member crew — NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore, 61, and Sunita Williams, 58 — had been strapped into their seats aboard the spacecraft for about an hour before launch activities were suspended.

They were subsequently assisted safely out of the capsule by technicians and whisked away from the launch complex in a van to await a second flight attempt once the issue has been resolved.

It is not uncommon in the space industry for countdowns to be halted at the 11th hour and for launches to be postponed for days or weeks, even when seemingly minor malfunctions or unusual sensor readings are detected, especially in new spacecraft flying humans for the first time.

Boeing faces intense public scrutiny of all its activities after its commercial airplane operations have been staggered by several crises, including the mid-air blowout of a plane door plug in January. The company has been eager to get its Starliner space venture off the ground to show signs of success and redeem a program years behind schedule with more than $1.5 billion in cost overruns.

While Boeing has struggled, SpaceX has become a dependable taxi to orbit for NASA, which is backing a new generation of privately built spacecraft that can ferry its astronauts and other customers to the ISS and, under the space agency’s more ambitious Artemis program, to the moon and eventually Mars.

Though Boeing has been relatively mute about its plans to sell commercial Starliner flights, the spacecraft would compete head-to-head with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, which since 2020 has been NASA’s only vehicle for sending ISS crew to orbit from U.S. soil.

Seasoned test flight crew

Selected to ride aboard Starliner for its first crewed flight were two NASA veterans who have logged a combined 500 days in space over the course of two previous missions each to the space station. Mr. Wilmore is the designated commander for Monday’s flight, with Ms. Williams in the pilot seat.

Although Starliner is designed to fly autonomously, the astronauts can assume control of the spacecraft if necessary. The test flight calls for Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams to practice maneuvering the vehicle manually while en route to the ISS.

Ironically, the flight would mark the first crewed voyage to space using an Atlas rocket since the storied series of launch vehicles first sent astronauts, including John Glenn, on orbital flights for NASA’s Mercury program in the 1960s.

Once launched, the capsule will arrive at the space station after a flight of about 26 hours and dock with the orbiting research outpost some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. A resident ISS crew, currently comprising four U.S. astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts, will be there to greet them.

Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams are expected to remain at the space station for about a week before riding the Starliner back to Earth for a parachute and airbag-assisted landing in the U.S. Desert Southwest – the first time such a system has been used for crewed NASA missions.

The test flight comes at an especially critical moment for Boeing. Its airplane business is dealing with fallout from a midair blowout of a cabin panel door plug on a nearly new 737 MAX 9 in January, as well as previous deadly crashes of two 737 MAX jets.

Getting Starliner to this point has been a fraught process for Boeing, beset by years of development setbacks and more than $1.5 billion in charges for the aerospace giant on a $4.2 billion fixed-priced contract with NASA.

The space agency wants the redundancy of having two different U.S. rides to the ISS, which is expected to retire around 2030. NASA is encouraging private development of new space stations that could replace the ISS after its retirement, potentially giving Starliner new destinations.

Depending on the outcome of the forthcoming flight test, Starliner is booked to fly at least six more crewed missions to the space station for NASA.