North Korea Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

I think calling this a tank destroyer would be a bit much.
More like an infantry support direct fire solution.

Of all things they had to clone one of the crappiest such systems.
The USA MGS Stryker. The Italian Centauro is probably the least bad of such systems.

Gloire_bb said:

View attachment 64538
So!
Summing up
-new hull with good era coverage. I mean completely new, it is completely different from both Songun and Chonma.
Engine is likely some part/evolution of v-46 family.

-completely new turret with 3 crew. I seriously suspect, that under outer sheeting there is something reminiscent of merkava turret. Reason: check roof era.

-115mm gun, for some reason w/o thermal sleeve. That doesn't inherently mean that gun is weak, btw.

-2 heavy ATGM as stock.

-full digital FCS with thermals, independent commander's sight and more. If thermals are locally sourced - that's huge.
First NK tank with them, by the way.

-APS(4xRadar, LWR, 4x3 interceptor rounds).

Hard to say what's real and what isn't here. NK isn't exactly known for 100% propaganda props, but what we see here is clearly...very ambitious.
I'd personally treat this as an attempt to keep up with k2. We shall see if it'll work.

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They very obviously put a shell over whatever they got underneath. The gap between the armor and the treads makes the thing feel hollow.

siegecrossbow said:

They very obviously put a shell over whatever they got underneath. The gap between the armor and the treads makes the thing feel hollow.

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I think the suspension is real and novel. Just look at it. It has seven road wheels and rubber rimmed tracks. That is not a T-62 at all.
Anyone who says this is a dolled up T-62 chassis, like I heard some say on Western news, is speaking BS.
The fact the suspension is new means this is a whole new tank chassis. People don't change the suspension of a tank that easily. It is often retained even among different tank generations. Plus the road wheels, from what I can see, don't seem to be either T-62 or T-72 types either.

They have been building stretched T55 and T62 hulls for a while now. They have been building there own tanks and APCs since the 80s at least.
An extra road wheel does mean a change but how much? To assume that they walked away to a totally new system seems a leap especially when we have little more than surface shots.

LiBoHanse said:

It should be a modified variant from

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(万山特车) lines

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I saw a Chinese analysis on why this thing is so huge:

The shape of the fairing at the tip suggest this thing isn't MIRV'd, so it's carrying one monster of a warhead.

What might be happening here is North Korea has not yet mastered Teller-Ulam devices (hydrogen bomb), and so without thermonuclear weapon they also can't make miniatured three stage strategic weapons such as the US W88 warhead which is 475 kiloton in a 300kg package. Small fission devices, something like the Fat Man with its 21 kiloton yield is not powerful enough to really threaten whole cities.

So chances are what North Korea did was going the brute force route and just scaled up their pure fission bomb up to hundreds of kiloton yield, resulting in a warhead that's several tons. To lob this beast all the way to US mainland would of course also require a similarly scaled up ICBM.

Gloire_bb said:

View attachment 64538
So!
Summing up
-new hull with good era coverage. I mean completely new, it is completely different from both Songun and Chonma.
Engine is likely some part/evolution of v-46 family.

-completely new turret with 3 crew. I seriously suspect, that under outer sheeting there is something reminiscent of merkava turret. Reason: check roof era.

-115mm gun, for some reason w/o thermal sleeve. That doesn't inherently mean that gun is weak, btw.

-2 heavy ATGM as stock.

-full digital FCS with thermals, independent commander's sight and more. If thermals are locally sourced - that's huge.
First NK tank with them, by the way.

-APS(4xRadar, LWR, 4x3 interceptor rounds).

Hard to say what's real and what isn't here. NK isn't exactly known for 100% propaganda props, but what we see here is clearly...very ambitious.
I'd personally treat this as an attempt to keep up with k2. We shall see if it'll work.

Click to expand...

Someone pointed out that APS rounds look to be faked based on the fact that they are angled upwards. It looks to be inspired by T-14's Afganit, observe how the Afganit rounds are aimed horizontally around the turret:



Coupled with the wobbly main gun suggests at least the turret might be a propaganda prop

TerraN_EmpirE said:

They have been building stretched T55 and T62 hulls for a while now. They have been building there own tanks and APCs since the 80s at least.
An extra road wheel does mean a change but how much? To assume that they walked away to a totally new system seems a leap especially when we have little more than surface shots.

Click to expand...

This is not just an extra road wheel. The T-62 tank has five road wheels. The T-72 has six road wheels. This tank has seven road wheels.
Most of their previous tanks were based on T-62 chassis. There were variants with an extra road wheel but still based on T-62 chassis.
The tracks don't look like either T-62 or T-72 tracks. These have rubber tracks. Not metal, nor metal with rubber pads like usual.

I think most if not all of the turret is a prop but the chassis is the real deal I think. The systems on the turret look all like empty boxes.

Is it that surprising that they have made a new suspension system themselves? Iran has the Zulqifar-3, which also has seven road wheels, which looks nothing like Soviet or Chinese types. A lot of people think what matters to a tank is the engine or the gun. But the main limiter in a tank design is actually the suspension system.

If the tank has more road wheels it typically indicates that it is heavier overall. Assuming the road wheel diameter is roughly the same.

You might have a high power engine but if the suspension isn't up to par you'll break the tracks or the road wheels themselves might get busted over rough terrain. If you don't have a low enough ground pressure you can't increase the weight of the tank which means you have to limit armor, ammo, and fuel. The main top speed limiter in a tank is also the suspension.

yes I can scout road wheels same as you can. Previous DPRK tanks had 6 but you are making assumptions. The road wheels are covered with a skirt. Is it a new hull? Yes is it a brand new type not necessarily. They could have stretched the existing type to fit a new engine and

gelgoog said:

The tracks don't look like either T-62 or T-72 tracks. These have rubber tracks. Not metal, nor metal with rubber pads like usual.

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Rubber band tracks have come a long way but generally fitting them on any vehicle over tones is not realistic. We see segments these are metal with rubber pads. Band tracks are as the name implies a continuous band. If you look at forward photos you see the segments.
New DPRK track.

rubber band track.

conventional track with Rubber shoes. It’s a conventional track with shoes.

gelgoog said:

Is it that surprising that they have made a new suspension system themselves? Iran has the Zulqifar-3, which also has seven road wheels, which looks nothing like Soviet or Chinese types. A lot of people think what matters to a tank is the engine or the gun. But the main limiter in a tank design is actually the suspension system

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Not that much but look again the Zulqifar 3 was more or less a one off using much smaller road wheels than this. We can see the general size of the road wheels which are in line with previous KPA models. Given the DPRKs previous models it seems more likely to me that they stretched the hull and used a modified version of the existing suspension which would be the standard torsion bar system pretty much the global standard. Then fitted with a new track system more in line with the type seen on more modern tanks like Abrams, VT4, T90, Leopard 2 ecta. Is it sign of weight increase? Probably. Is it a major change? Longer hull added wheels not necessarily a totally new suspension system. Consider the AJAX vehicle from Britain 7 wheels IFV. It’s based on ASCOD 7 road wheels. The Offerings made based on the same hull for the Griffin II and III both have 6 road wheels.

gelgoog said:

I think most if not all of the turret is a prop but the chassis is the real deal I think. The systems on the turret look all like empty boxes

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I take the turret very seriously. First the DPKR has never as far as we know been able to build the Soviet/Chinese Autoloader. This is why there turrets are larger like Abrams or Leopard 2 even Merkeva they have a third turret crewmen who loads the ammo. They also have never gotten the ability to reverse engineer the Sniper AT11 or AT8 Songster like the Chinese or even Iran. This is why their tanks often mount additional ATGMS. The boxes and the like arn’t that far off common vs older DPRK tanks as well. The shell well all modern MBT are a inner turret with additional modules mounted on them. What form and makeup differs. The part that is controversial isn’t the gun the DPRK is known to have both 115mm or 125mm tank guns. It’s the APS. It’s clearly meant to imitate Afganit in form, yet probably closer to Drozd 2. Though in the parade they were probably dummy’s.

Temstar said:

Someone pointed out that APS rounds look to be faked based on the fact that they are angled upwards. It looks to be inspired by T-14's Afganit, observe how the Afganit rounds are aimed horizontally around the turret:

Click to expand...

I saw that argument and I personally find it less than solid: Drozd/Afghanit is hardly the only possible solution to APS, and DPRK is quite capable of solving technical challenges of this level on their own.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

I take the turret very seriously. First the DPKR has never as far as we know been able to build the Soviet/Chinese Autoloader.

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It may be a deliberate choice.
They successfully copied other mechanically complex autoloaders(76mm Kim-melara, "Strykerski" from the very same parade), after all, and t-72 autoloader isn't exactly incomprehensible.

North Korea getting ready to launch a new 3,000-ton SLBM submarine