North Korea conducted another test of super-large multiple rocket launchers on Thursday afternoon, calling it a success, the state news agency KCNA said on Friday.

The latest test of the “super-large multiple rocket launchers”, following two tests in August and September of the same weapon that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un oversaw, according to KCNA, indicates the progression of North Korea’s weapons development while talks with the US remain in limbo.

The success of the tests was immediately reported, and Kim “expressed satisfaction” and congratulated the scientists who had developed the weapon, KCNA said, indicating Kim was not at the site.

North Korea’s state newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, showed a photo of the multiple rocket launcher, surrounded by yellow flames and smoke.

Thursday’s test verified that the “continuous fire system” of the multiple rocket launchers was able to “totally destroy” a group target of the enemy by a surprise strike, KCNA added.

“North Korea is engaged in increasingly escalatory behaviour,” Republican US senator Cory Gardner, chairman of the Senate foreign relations subcommittee on east Asia, the Pacific and international cybersecurity policy, said in a statement.

“This launch and continued North Korean aggression underscore the need for the Trump administration to re-commit to the maximum pressure policy” and for Congress to impose additional sanctions against the Kim government, Gardner said.

The weapons test, the first since one day of talks between the US and North Korea ended without an agreement on 5 October in Sweden, comes as North Korea repeatedly emphasises an end-of-the-year deadline for denuclearisation talks with Washington that Kim set earlier this year.

Although Kim and and the US president, Donald Trump, have a “special” relationship, “Washington political circles and DPRK policy makers of the US administration are hostile to the DPRK for no reason”, a North Korean statement on KCNA said last month.