North Korea’s state media said Thursday the country successfully fired a “hypersonic” missile, a claim that has yet to be independently confirmed. The “hypersonic gliding warhead” reportedly manoeuvred 120 kilometers (75 miles) laterally before it traveled 700 kilometers (435 miles) to “precisely” hit its target,  Pyongyang state media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) claimed. Other aspects such as flight control and the missile’s ability to operate in the winter were also confirmed in the test launch, KCNA asserted, adding that the missile was able to combine “multi-step glide jump flight and strong lateral manoeuvring.” The Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party expressed “great satisfaction” at the results of the missile test observed by leading weapons officials, KCNA 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 claims. …