North Korea is deploying its first nuclear armed submarine, the most fearsome weapon system on Earth.
Its modified Romeoclass submarine has launch tubes on the top, showing that it is capable of launching ballistic missiles. Its propulsion remains diesel, however, rather than nuclear. Fox News reports:
North Korea has reportedly deployed its first nuclear attack submarine as part of a fleet that patrols the Sea of Japan, between the Korean peninsula and Japan, state media reported.
The North Korean leader said arming the country’s navy with nuclear weapons was a very high priority, promising to send more vessels armed with nuclear weapons to the military branch.
Nuclear missile submarines are a key element in nuclear warfare. In the event that the country’s mainland and nuclear forces are destroyed, those submarines provide the key possibility of retaliation. Therefore, it now makes any attack on North Korea astronomically dangerous. Naval News goes into details:
The modification to the Romeo class submarine is so extensive that it almost appears to be a new boat. The new missile compartment, with two rows of five missile hatches, is in a section built into the sail. The bow has been shortened, reshaped and the diving planes moved to the sail.
We can speculate that the missiles are the Pukguksong family of submarine launched ballistic missiles. These are between 9.7 and 10.6 meters long and 1.5 and 1.8 meters in diameter depending on the exact version. The missile hatches however appear smaller, either for a shorter ranged ballistic missile first seen in October 2021, or for a cruise missile. North Korea has recently shown the ‘Hwasal-2′ cruise missile which approximates the U.S. Navy’s famous Tomahawk weapon.
While the submarine is not as powerful as American ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), the weapon system itself is fearsome. Once at sea, they become very difficult to continuously track. Should North Korea elect to use its missiles, Allied anti-missile systems will have a harder time intercepting them than those coming from the North Korean mainland.
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