North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered his country to quickly start mass producing self-detonating explosive drones, calling their development an “essential requirement,” after overseeing a test of the deadly aerial weapon, state media reported Friday.
Images published by North Korean state media show Kim and various officials at the launch site. Images show a car and a tank being destroyed by what appears to be unmanned aerial vehicles, which have been heavily blurred by the news agency.
State media reported that drones “of various types precisely hit the targets” as part of the test. They can be “used within different striking ranges” and are designed “to precisely attack any enemy targets on the ground and in the sea,” it said.
Kim said the use of such drones in military activities is being expanded around the world and authorities are recognizing that “drones are achieving clear successes in big and small conflicts,” state media reported.
Such self-detonating drones, also sometimes referred to as suicide drones, have been widely used to great effect on the battlefield in Russia’s war in Ukraine and in the Middle East.
Comparatively cheap to produce and usually deployed in swarms making their numbers difficult to shoot down, drones such as the Iranian-made Shahed 136 have transformed modern combat, providing an asymmetric advantage when deployed against technically superior adversaries.
Kim “underscored the need to build a serial production system as early as possible and go into full-scale mass production,” state media reported, adding that “such objective change urgently calls for updating many parts of military theory.”
The order comes as concern in the West grows over North Korea’s military cooperation with Russia.
The US State Department said Tuesday that 10,000 North Korean soldiers had been sent to Russia and “have begun engaging in combat operations with Russian forces” in Kursk region, where Ukraine’s three-month military incursion into Russian territory has stalled.
A Ukrainian commander previously told CNN North Korean troops were a “significant resource” for Moscow’s war on Ukraine, as even those being deployed defensively would free up Russian troops for assault operations elsewhere and would eventually be used in direct combat.
The North Korean troops dispatched to Russia are deemed to have not had suitable training for drone warfare, according to a South Korea’s Defense Intellectual Agency evaluation shared by lawmakers briefed on the issue.
South Korea’s defense minister last month expressed concern that Pyongyang is “very likely to ask” Moscow for advanced technology related to nuclear weapons in exchange for deploying troops to Ukraine.
Thursday’s drone test came after North Korea on Tuesday ratified a mutual defense treaty with Russia in which the two countries pledged to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance in the event the other is attacked.
The move cements the two countries’ deepening alignment in the face of their international isolation over Russia’s war in Ukraine and Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile program.
The defense pact was signed in June by Kim and Vladimir Putin during a rare state visit by the Russian leader to Pyongyang.
Kim previously oversaw the test of self-detonating drones in August, where he stressed the need to equip the North Korean army with them “as early as possible.”
In October, North Korea threatened “retaliation” after accusing South Korea of flying propaganda-filled drones over Pyongyang. Seoul did not confirm or deny the accusations after North Korea’s state-run KCNA published images of what it claimed was a drone, as well as leaflets that said, “a comparison of the food you can buy,” and “North Korea’s economic situation falling into hell.”
In 2022, North Korea sent five drones into South Korea, four of which flew around Ganghwa island and another that flew over capital Seoul’s northern airspace.
