North Korea Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter FORBIN
- Start date
-
- Tags
- north korea
North Korea is not blind as they have S-300PMU1/2 comparable SAM system with Pon'gae-5 along Pon'gae-6 with much larger radar.
3000 ton submarine
They don't help with looking onto South Korean soil - only airspace. Earth isn't concave.
Thus, apart from humint and sigint - they're de facto blind. And often lack the means to simply verify that the first two gather.
On the other hand, getting such flying sensors(which don't need to be world-beating) will almost immediately bring their understanding and target library against a country the size of South Korea to a solid modern level.
Which South Korea isn't really used to - watching the opponent one way is much more comfortable.
You provide no argument.
How they will source these SAR/multispectral side reconnaissance subsystem ? Homemade system or some technical gift ?
I forgot, it should be "can their shipbuilding industry have the capacity to build them in large numbers?"
That said, the Gorae/Sinpo class is actually very suitable as an attack submarine design - just ditch the SLBM launcher. But even if they decided to do that, I seriously doubt how many they could build.
For each of us it is legitimate to doubt, but the recent history of the North Korean military sector is full of articles by so-called "experts" or posts by simple enthusiasts who have underlined the backwardness of the North Koreans in research and design and its industrial infrastructures to be able then create modern weapon systems.
I remember how many statements regarding how many decades had to pass before the North Koreans managed to create modern anti-ship missiles, SLBM missiles, intercontinental missiles, solid-fuel missiles, miniaturized nuclear warheads, cruise missiles, etc. etc.
Then North Korea promptly denied everyone, presenting these products/systems.
Today many smile when it is hypothesized that after the presentation of these large UAVs/UCAVs the next step will be a piloted combat aircraft, perhaps preceded, rightly, by training aircraft which can be of two types: propeller planes and jet planes.
Who knows if that smile will soon turn into amazement.
PS
The biggest mistake you can make is underestimating the capabilities of a potential opponent
It's just why building a LR asset like that to just turn it in circle above your head... Yeah you can go back and forth on the border but I find that plaform overkill to do so.
Yeah they don't need satelllite to make it fly but to use it at full potential they need way more than 500km communication.
It's not that I underestimate North Korea, they undoubtedly have an extremely formidable military industrial complex. But the weakest link in it is their shipbuilding industry. The separation of the east and west coasts due to the division of the South and the North, the relative negligence of trade and shipping due to the North Korean defense, and the systematic closure of the shipbuilding industry means its condition is very bad.
North Korea is relatively adept at building compact and cheap warship designs, but has never been good at building larger designs - both surface ships and submarines. The last time they built a class of ships weighing over 1,000 tons in large numbers was in the mid-70s, with the Romeo/Type 033 submarine class, and even then they only carry out assembly based on imported kits. Almost all of their domestic large warship designs never exceed 3 units, and most of them have design and stability problems.
I'm betting on the Russians helping with the design, but the problems related to shipbuilding infrastructure are fundamentally difficult to overcome due to the reasons I mentioned above.
But everything is not necessarily just pessimism. If what I'm looking at is a marine turbine-gas engine, it's almost certain that North Korea is brewing up something BIG - if it's just a small warship, a diesel engine is enough. Either it was intended for later variants of the Nampo/Amnok class frigate, or it belonged to something even more ambitious.