Drone flew underwater for 59 hours, then exploded in an exercise designed to deter South Korea and US troops: KCNA.
North Korea has tested a new underwater nuclear attack drone designed to unleash a “radioactive tsunami” that would destroy enemy naval ships and ports, state media reported.
North Korea’s military deployed and tested the new weapon system during a military exercise conducted this week under the leadership of the country’s leader Kim Jong-un. Blow and wave, state news agency KCNA said Friday.
“This underwater nuclear attack drone can be deployed at any coast and harbor or towed by a surface vessel for use,” said KCNA.
The news agency said during the exercise, the drone was placed in water off South Hamgyong province on Tuesday and submerged for 59 hours and 12 minutes, at a depth of about 80 to 150 meters (260 to 490 feet), before detonating in the waters off the east coast on Thursday.
KCNA did not discuss the drone’s nuclear capabilities.
The underwater drone system is intended to launch sneak attacks in enemy waters and destroy naval strike groups and major operational ports, the news agency said.
North Korean state media notes that Kim Jong-un oversaw recent weapons tests, including a “new underwater offensive weapon system.” KCNA describes it as “Underwater Unmanned Nuclear Attack Ship ‘Haeil'”. (No previous indication that such a program existed in the DPRK.) pic.twitter.com/LHHp4V8B3D
— Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) March 23, 2023
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency said the drone’s ultimate target was a mock enemy harbor set up in the waters of Hongwon Bay, according to state media reports.
The reported drone exercise comes as a US amphibious assault ship arrived in South Korea for joint military exercises codenamed “Freedom Shield”. Following Pyongyang’s unprecedented year of weapons testing and saber chatter, the US and South Korea stepped up defense cooperation and on March 13 began what will be their largest joint military exercises in five years.
Last weekend, the two Allies conducted air and naval exercises involving US B-1B strategic bombers. Their navies and marines are ready to begin the large-scale amphibious landing exercises of the Ssangyong. The exercises will last for two weeks until April 3.
Yonhap said the North Korean news agency also quashed the joint US-South Korean exercises, which he said had “driven the military and political situation of the Korean peninsula to an irreversibly dangerous point.”
North Korea has long claimed that Washington and Seoul were conducting military exercises as rehearsals for a future invasion and that its own weapons tests were in response to such exercises.
According to KCNA, Kim Jong-un “supervised” this week’s underwater drone exercise, saying it should serve as a warning to Washington and Seoul to “realize that the DPRK’s unlimited nuclear war-deterrent capability is being strengthened at a greater rate.”
DPRK is the abbreviation of the official name of North Korea: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
In a separate flexing of its military muscles this week, North Korea also confirmed it had fired four cruise missiles on Wednesday to practice conducting tactical nuclear strike missions. The missiles were tipped with a “test warhead simulating a nuclear warhead” and flew 1,500 to 1,800 km (932 to 1,120 mi), the KCNA news agency added Friday.
The South Korean military confirmed on Thursday that North Korea had fired four cruise missiles off the country’s east coast the day before.
KCNA said that two “Hwasal-1” type strategic cruise missiles and two “Hwasal-2” type strategic cruise missiles, launched in South Hamgyong Province, accurately targeted their target in the Baltic Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan. have hit.
Those launches come about a week after North Korea tested its largest and most powerful missile, a Hwasong-17 — its second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test so far this year.