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North Korea claimed on Friday it had tested a nuclear-capable underwater drone designed to produce a giant “radioactive tsunami” that would destroy its naval attack group and port. Analysts were skeptical that the device presents a major new threat, but the test underlines the North’s commitment to raise the nuclear threat.
This week’s test comes as the United States reportedly plans to deploy an aircraft carrier strike group and other advanced assets into the waters of the Korean Peninsula. Military tensions are at a high point as the pace of North Korean weapons tests and joint US-South Korean military exercises have accelerated over the past year in a cycle of tit-for-tat responses.
Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said the new weapon, which could be deployed from shore or towed by surface ships, was built to “stealthly infiltrate operational waters and create a super-scale radioactive tsunami through underwater explosions” to destroy enemy navies. . attack groups and ports.
The report came hours before South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed to make North Korea pay for “reckless provocations” as he attended a memorial service to honor 55 South Korean soldiers killed in major clashes with North Korea near the western sea border in years the past
Simulated attack
The testing of the purported “nuclear underwater attack drone” was part of a three-day exercise simulating a nuclear attack on an unspecified South Korean target, which also included a cruise missile launch Wednesday.
KCNA said the North’s latest test was aimed at alerting the United States and South Korea to a “nuclear crisis” while continuing “deliberate, persistent and provocative war drills.” He said the test was being overseen by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who has vowed to make his rivals “plunge into despair.”
The U.S. and South Korea completed 11 exercises on Thursday that included the largest field exercise in years, and are preparing for another joint naval exercise that will reportedly involve a U.S. aircraft carrier.
Hours after North Korea’s report, South Korea’s air force released details of a five-day joint air exercise with the United States that began on Monday and ended on Friday over the waters off South Korea’s west coast, which included live-fire demonstrations of air-to-air weapons. and air.
The air force said the exercise, which involved various South Korean fighter jets and at least one US A-10 attack aircraft, was aimed at verifying its precision strike capability and reaffirming the credibility of Seoul’s “three-axis” strategy against the North Korean nuclear threat – source preemptively striking attacks, intercepting incoming missiles and neutralizing the Northern leadership and major military facilities.
The North Korean drone is named “Haeil,” a Korean word that means wave or tsunami. The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper published a photo of a smiling Kim next to a large torpedo-shaped object in an unspecified indoor facility, but did not identify it.
Another photo published with the same article shows tracks on the surface of the sea allegedly caused by the underwater trajectory of the drone and a pillar of water exploding in the air, possibly caused by what state media described as an underwater detonation of a mock nuclear weapon carried by the drone. .
KCNA said the drone was deployed Tuesday off the North’s east coast, traveled underwater for nearly 60 hours, and detonated a test warhead at a target located in an enemy port. It said the test proved the operational reliability of the drone, which it said the North had developed since 2012 and tested more than 50 times in the past two years, although the weapon had never been mentioned before in state media until Friday.
Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Seoul University of North Korean Studies, said he could not verify North Korea’s claims about drone capabilities or that it had tested the system several times. However, he said, the North wanted to tell them that the weapons had enough range to reach all South Korean ports.
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