North tests ‘underwater nuclear attack drone’

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North tests ‘underwater nuclear attack drone’

Published: 24 Mar. 2023, 09:45 Updated: 24 Mar. 2023, 16:24

An ″underwater nuclear attack drone″ detonates off the coast of Hongwon Bay in South Hamgyong Province on Thursday in this photo released by Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Friday. [YONHAP]

North Korea's state media said Friday that the regime conducted a test of an “underwater nuclear attack drone” as well as four cruise missile launches earlier this week that were overseen by leader Kim Jong-un.

According to an English-language report by Pyongyang's state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the underwater drone, named Haeil, was deployed off the country's eastern coast at Riwon County, South Hamgyong Province, on Tuesday and detonated its test warhead upon reaching its target outside Hongwon Bay on Thursday afternoon.

The agency said the drone cruised “along an oval and pattern-8 course at an underwater depth of 80 to 150 meters [262 to 292 feet] in the East Sea of Korea for 59 hours and 12 minutes.”

According to the KCNA, the purpose of the underwater drone “is to stealthily go into the operational waters and destroy the enemy’s warships and major operational ports by creating superpower radioactive tidal waves with underwater explosion.”

The state news agency said that development of the underground vessel began in 2012 and has been tested “on more than 50 occasions” in the last two years, with 29 of those tests “personally guided” by Kim.

The blurred-out schematics of the ″underwater nuclear attack drone″ tested by Pyongyang between March 21 and 23 are visible behind leader Kim Jong-un issuing guidance to North Korean officials in this photo released by the Korean Central News Agency. [YONHAP]

Writing on Twitter, nuclear policy and missile expert Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said blurred-out diagrams of the drone in photos released by the KCNA bore a resemblance to the Russian Poseidon nuclear-powered unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), with the exception that the North Korean UUV likely does not use nuclear propulsion.

Panda noted that the operational concept of the North Korean drone was similar to that of the Poseidon in that it is designed to be a “second-strike system” and a “nuclear-armed UUV.”

But Panda also noted that he could not “rule out the possibility that [the UUV test] is an attempt at deception,” given the sudden disclosure of the system’s previously-unreported development history.

“[It] would be ill-advised to allocate limited [fissile material] for a warhead to go in this thing, as opposed to more road-mobile ballistic missiles,” he wrote, adding that if the North Korean UUV was a real system intended for deployment, its berth and storage sites would become priority targets for South Korean and U.S. pre-emptive strikes in a potential crisis.

A white Hwasal-2 ″strategic″ cruise missile is fired from a transporter erector launcher in Hamhung, South Hamgyong Province, in this photo released by Pyongyang's state-controlled Korean Central News Agency on Friday. [YONHAP]

The North also launched four long-range cruise missiles, which the KCNA said were two Hwasal-1 and two Hwasal-2 nuclear-capable “strategic” cruise missiles, as part of an exercise to check the “working reliability of the nuclear explosion controlling and triggering devices.”

Video footage broadcast by Pyongyang’s state-controlled Korean Central Television (KCTV) showed the cruise missiles being fired from cannisters atop a transporter erector launcher.

The KCNA reported that all of the missiles were launched from the Hungnam District of Hamhung, South Hamgyong Province, and detonated at a set altitude of 600 meters after flying in an “oval and ‘8’-figure path” which “simulated 1,500 and 1,800-kilometer-long distance set on the East Sea.”

The missiles were loaded with trial warheads that simulated nuclear weapons, according to the KCNA.

Kim, who attended the weapons tests, said that the exercises were intended to warn South Korea and the United States that “they will lose more” and “face greater threats” if they continue carrying out large-scale joint military exercises, the state news agency reported.

The allies concluded their 11-day Freedom Shield joint exercise on Thursday.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]