North Korean propaganda media released footage of a new warship under construction, taken during Kim Jong-un's visit to the site.
According to Naval News, North Korea is building a missile frigate with a displacement of 3,000 tons. Its design has some features of the unrealized russian stealth corvette of project 20386 Derzky.
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The authors of this publication emphasize that North Korea is building a ship that is fundamentally new for it in several aspects. In particular, this ship will be the largest for the DPRK: the most modern North Korean warships, the Amnok-class frigates, have a displacement of only 1,500 tons.
Moreover, this missile frigate might be the first North Korean vessel to feature vertical launchers for anti-aircraft and cruise missiles. Before this, the most powerful air defense weapon on North Korean Navy ships was limited to Igla MANPADS launchers.
The authors of the publication suggest that the frigate’s design may include features from the unrealized russian corvette Project 20368 Derzky, evidenced by the visual similarity of its superstructure elements.
As Defense Express, we should note that the assumption that the design of the DPRK's frigate, which is currently under construction, has features of the russian project Derzky, may be a bit of an exaggeration. Moreover, we are talking about ships of different class and size.
On the other hand, we should not rule out the possibility that russia could have provided North Korea with the necessary technologies to build a frigate with vertical launchers, and North Korean engineers simply "creatively reinterpreted" the material they received.
It is also worth recalling that in October 2024, it became known that North Korea was constructing a mysterious ship in a new 170-meter-long slipway, with russia reportedly involved again. Apparently, in this case, it was about this 3,000-ton missile frigate that North Korea's propagandists have now shown.
Earlier Defense Express reported that the Special Operations Forces had offered insights into North Korean tactics against Ukraine.
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