North Korea said Thursday it successfully fired a hypersonic ballistic missile. The “hypersonic gliding warhead” detached from its rocket booster and manoeuvred 120 kilometers (75 miles) laterally before it traveled 700 kilometers (435 miles) to “precisely” hit its target, reported Pyongyang state media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The test also confirmed other aspects such as flight control and its ability to operate in the winter, and the missile was able to combine “multi-step glide jump flight and strong lateral manoeuvring,” KCNA said. The Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party expressed “great satisfaction” at the results of the missile test observed by leading weapons officials, KCNA also reported. “The successive successes in the test launches in the hypersonic missile sector have strategic significance in that they hasten a task for modernizing strategic armed force of the state,” the KCNA report said. The word “strategic” implies the missile is being developed to deliver …