North Korea Tests Fires Alleged New Weapon System
April 19, 2019GIKorea 2 Comments
It looks like North Korea has decided to fire a battlefield rocket which allows them to slowly increase tensions without creating a full blown crisis that firing a ballistic missile would do:
North Korea’s state-run Korean Central TV reported on Wednesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave “field guidance” to pilots from Unit 1017 of the Korean People’s Army Air and Anti-Air Force, one of his most recent military outings. [YONHAP]
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Wednesday supervised a test firing of a “new-type tactical guided weapon” developed by an institute responsible for its missile program, according to state media.
The development of the new weapon system was an “event of very weighty significance in increasing the combat power of the People’s Army,” read the state-run Rodong Sinmun’s English report on the test, which attributed the system’s development to the Academy of Defense Science.
Several military analysts in South Korea said it could be a variation of a short-range ballistic missile launcher imported from Russia called the 9K720 Iskander, which North Korea displayed at a military parade in Pyongyang last February.
The only description of the weapon itself in the Rodong Sinmun report was that its “design indexes” had “advantages … appreciated for the peculiar mode of guiding flight,” indicating that it was outfitted with a type of guidance system. The test involved “various modes of firing at different targets” that verified “the load of a powerful warhead,” the report added.
Joong Ang Ilbo
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