North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wants the country to begin mass production of suicide drones, raising concerns that Pyongyang could potentially send these to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.
State media reported that the country’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un visited a test site for the unmanned attack aircraft.
“The suicide attack drones, designed to be used within different striking ranges on the ground and the sea, are to perform a precision attack mission against any enemy targets,” the Korea Central News Agency report said. In tests, the drones “precisely hit” targets, it said.
Kim “underscored the need to build a serial production system as early as possible and go into full-scale mass production,” the report said.
Though the report made no mention of the possibility of North Korea manufacturing drones to be sold to Russia, several analysts said that Pyongyang might look to do just that.
The war is the motivation behind North Korean drone development, Bruce Bennett, a researcher at the U.S.-based RAND Corporation told RFA Korean.
“Putin wants cheap weapons, and Kim Jong Un can produce them,” said Bennett. “I suspect that Russia transferred drone technology to support North Korea’s production.”
He also noted that any North Korean ability to mass-produce drones could be a potential threat to South Korea.
The successful test of suicide drones as reported by North Korean state media is a concern in light of the deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang, Bruce Klingner of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation said.
Klingner said that North Korea has already provided Russia with artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and over 10,000 troops.
He also said that the recent ratification of a comprehensive bilateral security treaty between Russia and North Korea suggests that Moscow might soon increase transfer of military technology to Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department expressed concern over the deepening relationship, calling it and its associated weapons transfers “a trend that should be of great concern to anyone who is interested in maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, preserving the global nonproliferation regime, and supporting the Ukrainian people.”
Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.