Devised as a show of force orchestrated against its southern neighbor, North Korea just test-fired several 600 mm rockets again proving to the world that the communist nation army actually operated the world’s largest Multiple Launch Rocket System. According to the North Korean News Agency bellicose rhetoric, the “power demonstration firing drill” which saw the launch of 18 “super large” rockets only served as a response to South Korea’s “intolerably hideous act of provocation”.
As such, Friday’s test-firing which mobilized an entire Multiple Launch Rocket System company attached to the 3rd Battalion of the 331st Red Flag Artillery Regiment was directed by General Jang Chang Ha, director general of the country’s Missile Administration. Also in attendance was the country’s President, Kim Jung Un, personnally issuing the actual firing order from a nearby observation post. With the convincingly choreographed event confirming that the salvo of 18 projectiles reportedly landed in a remote island 365 kilometers away.
Through various reports available to the media since 2020, the ‘Super Large’ MLRS built by North Korea employs a four-barrel rocket launcher configuration mounted on a classic truck chassis. Although MLRS are most commonly found in configuration similar to the highly popular Russian-designed BM-21 “Grad” Multiple Launch Rocket System employing 122 mm rockets arrayed in up to 40 launching tubes, others like the US-built HIMARS are configured to fire salvos of only 6 rockets albeit of a much larger 227 mm of diameter.
On May 11th 2024, North Korea carried out a test-firing of a Multiple Launch Rocket System reportedly fitted with 22 precision-guided 240 mm rockets.
According to data compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the system test-fired today and refrred to as the KN-25 Missile System has seen several test-firings from August 25th 2019 through March 2nd 2021, with rockets consistantly reaching a maximum range of 380 km flying at an altitude of 97 km.
While the North Korean News Agency highlighted the fact that Friday’s test-firing of a 18-rockets relied on a “integrated fire-control system”, the operational nature of the KN-25 MLRS system has yet to be fully understood. While CSIS has pointed out that United States Forces Korean consider it a Short Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM), the use of a “integrated fire-control system” tends to confirm that opinion. Also supporting that opinion is the uncompromising nature of North Korean propaganda which continously depicts the system’s operational abilities as part of a nuclear-themed drills. Would conventional North Korean Forces actually operate a system with such outsize unconventional caliber?