Army Col. Robert Manning, a spokesman for the Defense Department, has said DoD identified and tracked an intercontinental ballistic missile launched by North Korea, the Pentagon reported Tuesday.

The ICBM took off from the northern part of North Korea’s Pyongyang capital at 1:17 p.m. Eastern time and flew approximately 620 miles east before it landed in the Sea of Japan.

Manning said North Korea’s missile launch did not pose a threat to the U.S., North America, other territories and allies based on the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s assessment.

The New York Times also reported that the ICBM – Hwasong-15 – flew for 53 minutes and the missile launch marks the third ICBM test that North Korea conducted this year.

North Korea launched its first IBCM test in July followed by another missile launch in September.

Defense Secretary James Mattis expressed concern on North Korea’s latest IBCM test, which he said “went higher, frankly, than any previous shot they’ve taken.”

“The bottom line is, it’s a continued effort to build a threat — a ballistic missile threat that endangers world peace, regional peace, and certainly, the United States,” Mattis added.

North Korea’s missile test came a week after President Donald Trump reinstated the East Asian country’s state sponsor of terrorism designation and after the Treasury Department imposed new sanctions on foreign firms and agencies that have commercial ties to the country.

The U.S. Air Force has selected Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida as its preferred location to house a new military wing along with 24 units of the General Atomics-built MQ-9 Reaper remotely controlled aircraft.

Tyndall’s MQ-9 Reaper Wing will comprise an operations group that will have mission control elements and launch-and-recovery platforms, as well as a maintenance team, the Air Force said Tuesday.

Air Force secretary Heather Wilson said the service branch wants Tyndall to serve as homebase for the new RPA wing because of the location’s air space, nearby training ranges and weather.

The selection aligns with the Air Combat Command’s efforts to propagate MQ-9-related assignment opportunities under the Culture and Process Improvement Plan.

Wilson could hand down a final basing decision once an environmental analysis of the Tyndall base is completed, the Air Force noted.

The service branch projects that MQ-9s will arrive at the final selected base in 2022 and the airmen who will operate the aircraft in 2020.

The Defense Department has revealed in a new report that a total of 25,910 U.S. troops are currently deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, Defense News reported Monday.

There are 8,892 U.S. troops in Iraq, 15,298 in Afghanistan and 1,720 in Syria as of Sept. 30, according to a DoD report publicly released on Nov. 17.

The Defense Manpower Data Center provided the figures as part of a quarterly count of active duty, Reserve, Guard and civilian personnel deployed worldwide.

The actual numbers could be higher because DoD has historically excluded certain special operations forces or temporary personnel from the official count, Defense News said.

DMDC’s figures are higher than DoD’s previous disclosures of overseas troop levels.

Japan aims to develop its own stand-off cruise missile that can be launched from aircraft, warships and land-based defense systems to engage targets on land and at sea, The Drive reported Tuesday.

The Yomiuri Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, said that Japan’s defense ministry would study the addition of a land-attack capability to existing anti-ship missile development programs and that research and development would begin in fiscal year 2018.

The report did not specify the future missile’s features but described the weapon as a Japanese version of the Raytheon-made Tomahawk land attack missiles.

Japan could integrate new long-range cruise missiles with the Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense architecture that the country is planning to buy, or purchase Tomahawks for those systems as a supplement to its own weapons, The Drive reported.

The Japanese military could use its own cruise missile to address security threats posed by North Korea as well as tensions in the East China Sea, the report noted.