The second-highest ranking military officer in the U.S. told Congress on Tuesday that while North Korea "clearly" has missiles with the capability to reach the United States, it does not have the capacity to strike accurately or successfully. 
 
 On July 4, North Korea successfully tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which traveled into a high-altitude trajectory of 1,730 miles and flew horizontally about 575 miles into the Sea of Japan. 
 
 "I ... am not sanguine that the test on the Fourth of July demonstrates that they have the capacity to strike the United States with any degree of accuracy or reasonable confidence of success," Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. 
 
 "On range, they clearly have the capability," he added. 
 
 Despite North Korea's success on July 4, experts assess that the regime does not presently have the re-entry technology needed for a nuclear warhead to reach its target. It's also believed that North Korea lacks the ability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead capable of being mounted on top of an ICBM. 
 
 But the test did demonstrate that this new missile -- if fired at the proper trajectory -- was capable of reaching Alaska. 
 
 AFP/Getty Images 
 
 "Testing an ICBM represents a new escalation of the threat to the United States, our allies and partners, the region, and the world," Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement following the test earlier this month. 
 
 As with some previous missile tests, the ICBM was fired via a mobile-launcher, making it harder for U.S. intelligence to track the movement of North Korea's weapons, something Selva said concerned him. 
 
 "I'm reasonably confident in the ability of our intelligence community to monitor the testing but not the deployment of these missile systems," he said. "Kim Jong-un and his forces are very good at camouflage, concealment and deception." 
 
 Despite Tillerson's assertion that the ICBM test represented an "escalation of the threat" to the U.S., the Trump administration has insisted it will use diplomacy first in dealing with this latest provocation. ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea does not have the ability to strike the United States with “any degree of accuracy” and while its missiles have the range, they lack the necessary guidance capability, the vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Tuesday. 
 
 Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Air Force General Paul Selva speaks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, U.S., October 28, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron 
 
 Earlier this month North Korea said it had conducted its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and that it had mastered the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on the missile. 
 
 But General Paul Selva, speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the July 4th test stopped short of showing North Korea had “the capacity to strike the United States with any degree of accuracy or reasonable confidence of success.” 
 
 Pyongyang’s state media said the test successfully verified the atmospheric re-entry of the warhead, which experts say may be able to reach the U.S. state of Alaska. 
 
 “What the experts tell me is that the North Koreans have yet to demonstrate the capacity to do the guidance and control that would be required,” said Selva, the second highest-ranking U.S. military official. 
 
 South Korea’s intelligence agency also does not believe North Korea has secured re-entry capabilities for its ICBM program. 
 
 South Korea on Monday proposed military talks with North Korea, the first formal overture to Pyongyang by the government of President Moon Jae-in, to discuss ways to avoid hostile acts near the heavily militarized border. 
 
 The United States has remained technically at war with North Korea since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty and the past six decades have been punctuated by periodic rises in antagonism and rhetoric that have always stopped short of a resumption of active hostilities. 
 
 Tensions have risen sharply after North Korea conducted two nuclear weapons tests last year and carried out a steady stream of ballistic missile tests. 
 
 When asked about preemptive military operations against North Korea, Selva said he believed that “we have to entertain that potential option.” 
 
 “We need to think seriously about what the consequences of that action might be,” Selva said. ||||| Washington (CNN) A North Korean official reaffirmed Pyongyang's commitment to developing a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching "all the way to the East coast of the mainland US," on Monday, telling CNN that the rogue nation is currently not interested in diplomacy with the US until it achieves that goal. 
 
 The comments offer a sobering challenge to the US and the Trump administration which has offered mixed messages regarding diplomatic efforts with North Korea. 
 
 White House chief of staff John Kelly said last week that Americans should be concerned about North Korea's ability to reach the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile, cryptically telling reporters that if the threat grows "beyond where it is today, well, let's hope that diplomacy works." 
 
 Significantly, Kelly noted that Pyongyang "is developing a pretty good nuclear re-entry vehicle." 
 
 For a missile to successfully strike a target it would have to re-enter the earth's atmosphere without breaking up. 
 
 Kelly's comments seem to indicate that the US believes that North Korea is close to achieving what would be a key breakthrough for their missile program. 
 
 The North Korean official told CNN that two additional steps are needed to achieve its goal of a reliable ICBM. 
 
 One step is an above-ground nuclear detonation , like the kind North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho threatened at the United Nations last month when he suggested leader Kim Jong Un was considering detonating "an unprecedented scale hydrogen bomb " over the Pacific after Trump threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea. 
 
 The other step is the "testing of a long-range ICBM capable of reaching Guam - and even further," the official said. 
 
 Last week, North Korean state media renewed a threat to launch missiles toward the US territory of Guam, warning that "reckless moves" by the US would compel Pyongyang to take action. 
 
 North Korea first said it was examining a plan to target the Pacific island in August after Trump warned the isolated regime would "face fire and fury like the world has never seen" following a US intelligence assessment that North Korea had produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead. 
 
 Both steps are necessary for the DPRK to send that "clear message" to the Trump administration that it possesses an effective nuclear deterrent, the North Korean official said on Monday. 
 
 The official added that one or both of these tests could possibly be timed to coincide with the US-South Korea joint naval drills, which began Monday and will last for ten days, or could possibly coincide with Trump's visit to Asia next month. 
 
 Joint military exercises are particularly infuriating to Pyongyang. The North Korean government views them as a dress rehearsal for an invasion -- even as the US insists they are purely defensive in nature. 
 
 The US will practice evacuating civilians from South Korea in its annual Courageous Channel training exercise later this month -- a routinely scheduled exercise that "prepares service members and their families to respond to a wide range of crisis management events such as non-combatant evacuation and natural or man made disasters," according to US Forces Korea. 
 
 Asked Monday if his possible visit to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) next month will provoke North Korea Trump said he would "take a look at that" but added he "hadn't heard in terms of provoking." 
 
 On Sunday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said his diplomatic efforts will continue as long as they possibly can despite the saber-rattling on both sides of the Pacific. 
 
 "Those diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops," Tillerson said on CNN's "State of the Union." 
 
 Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of the House Foreign Affairs Committee told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday that he believes the US should continue to pursue diplomacy with Pyongyang but ultimately, must prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching the US. 
 
 "I don't believe we can live with that possibility," he said. 
 
 North Korean anger over US 'decapitation' plan 
 
 A North Korean diplomat publicly expressed anger on Monday over reports that hackers gained access to a US-South Korean plan to "decapitate" the regime's leadership. 
 
 North Korea's deputy UN Ambassador warned that the plan is "dangerous" and an insult to the nation. 
 
 CNN has reported that the North Korea hackers stole classified military documents from a South Korean Defense ministry database in September 2016, according to Rhee Cheol-hee, a member of South Korea's National Assembly. He said the documents stolen included the South Korea-US wartime operational plan and a document that includes procedures to "decapitate" the North Korean leadership. 
 
 North Korea's deputy Ambassador Kim In Ryong told a UN committee meeting on nuclear issues that "what is more dangerous is that the US dared to formulate a plan and stage the exercise of decapitation operation and secret operation aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership." 
 
 "This is an unbearable insult to the supreme dignity of the DPRK and it arouses extreme anger from our people and service personnel," Ryong said. 
 
 The North Korean UN diplomat also fiercely defended Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests. 
 
 Why North Korea wants nukes and missiles North Korea has long maintained it wants nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to deter the United States from attempting to overthrow the regime of Kim Jong Un. Pyongyang looks at states such as Iraq -- where Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the United States -- and Libya -- its late leader, Moammar Gadhafi, gave up his nuclear ambitions for sanctions relief and aid, only to be toppled and killed after the United States intervened in his country's civil unrest -- and believes that only being able to threaten the US mainland with a retaliatory nuclear strike can stop American military intervention. Many experts say they believe North Korea would not use the weapons first. Kim values his regime's survival above all else and knows the use of a nuclear weapon would start a war he could not win, analysts say. 
 
 "Unless the hostile policy and the nuclear threat of the US is thoroughly eradicated, we will never put our nuclear weapons and ballistic rockets on the negotiation table under any circumstance and will never flinch even an inch from the road we have chosen, upholding the line of simultaneously developing the two fronts, the everlasting banner in safeguarding the peace," Ryong said. 
 
 "This year, we have passed the final gate of completing the state nuclear force and thus became the full- fledged nuclear power which possesses the delivery means of various ranges, including the atomic bomb, H-bomb and intercontinental ballistic rockets," he said. "The entire US mainland is within our firing range and if the US dares to invade our sacred territory even an inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe." 
 
 Mixed messages 
 
 US-led efforts to apply additional diplomatic pressure on North Korea in recent months have been met with greater defiance as the Kim regime continues to march toward realizing its nuclear ambitions. 
 
 Despite assurances from Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the US continues to seek a peaceful resolution, neither side has overtly indicated that it is ready or willing to engage in serious negotiations. 
 
 Trump has repeatedly undercut comments made by his top officials and publicly engaged in a war of words with Kim that has devolved into insults and name-calling -- only raising fears of an eventual military conflict. 
 
 Trump said earlier this month that the US will "do what we must do" to prevent further threats from North Korea. 
 
 "We cannot allow this dictatorship to threaten our nation or our allies with unimaginable loss of life," he said at a meeting with top military officers. "We will do what we must do to prevent that from happening and it will be done if necessary, believe me."
– When it comes to North Korea's ability to hit the the US with a nuclear warhead, there's good news and bad news. Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that North Korea "clearly" has missiles that can reach the US, ABC News reports. Selva said the ICBM tested by North Korea on the Fourth of July could reach Alaska. But, according to Reuters, Selva added that North Korea doesn't yet have the missile re-entry and guidance technology to hit a US target with "any degree of accuracy" or to have any "reasonable confidence of success" in the strike. Selva told the Armed Services Committee that while "we have to entertain" the possibility of a preemptive military strike against North Korea, the US also needs "to think seriously about what the consequences of that action might be." The Washington Post reports a poll conducted shortly after North Korea's July 4 missile test found 74% of Americans are concerned about a full-scale war with the country. And only 36% of poll respondents have "a good amount" of confidence in President Trump to handle the situation with North Korea.