The Drive:

Over the weekend, North Korean state media released a series of pictures of ballistic missile launches the country had carried out between September 25 and October 9, including from the rare and extremely provocative shot over Japan last week. In doing so, officials in Pyongyang revealed a previously unknown capability in the country’s missile arsenal, the ability to fire ballistic missiles intended to be launched from submarines from submerged launchers in lakes. While North Korea has mobile ballistic missile launchers, some of them gigantic in size, and has previously demonstrated the ability to employ ballistic missiles from trains, all of which enhance survivability, a lake-based launch concept could offer another level of protection. This is especially true when it comes to realizing some kind of rudimentary second-strike nuclear deterrent.

An official news story from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) accompanying the pictures said that the launch of the missile from the lake – technically a reservoir – was conducted on September 25. The exact type of missile does not appear to have been named in the news item, but pictures clearly show that it is an example of an apparently short-range submarine-launch ballistic missile (SLBM) type that the North Koreans first unveiled publicly in October 2021.

Two details from the KCNA story are immediately notable, the first being the official statement that this missile is at least designed to carry a “tactical” nuclear warhead. The dimensions of the missile would indicate that any such nuclear warhead would have to be relatively small, adding to previously available evidence of North Korea’s ability to produce warheads of this general size.

In addition, the language KCNA used to describe this launch indicates that this lake bottom launch system is at least designed to be an operational weapon system, rather than some kind of test fixture. The way the official news story talked about the other launches similarly pointed to exercises meant to demonstrate operational capabilities, or intended operational capabilities, rather than developmental tests of the weapons themselves.

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