North Korea has reportedly resumed shipments of tactical ballistic missiles to equip frontline models within the Russian Armed Forces, marking the most recent section in an increasing army partnership between the 2 neighbours. These embody KN-23 and shorter ranged KN-24 missiles, each of started deliveries to Russia in late 2023. Russia started procurements after its personal shares of precision-guided ballistic missiles got here beneath growing pressure because of hostilities within the Ukrainian theatre. The renewed deliveries exhibit that North Korea has develop into one in all Russia’s most vital suppliers of precision guided weapons.
In early June North Korean state media has proven footage of a serious facility producing tactical ballistic missiles for the KN-23 system, because the nation’s management has introduced crops for a 2.5 fold enlargement in ballistic and cruise missile manufacturing capability over 5 years. The deliberate enhance in capability was ordered as North Korea faces each excessive demand for its missiles overseas, most notably from Russia. North Korea’s missile manufacturing scale has had few rivals on this planet, with frontline models deployed close to the inter-Korean Demilitarised Zone having acquired 1,000 KN-24 missiles and related launchers in a single ceremony in August 2024.
The KN-23 has been used extensively within the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict, as first confirmed in January 2024, supplementing Russia’s domestically developed Iskander-M ballistic missile system. The missile has many vital similarities to the Iskander-M, elevating the chance that its growth might have benefitted from expertise transfers or different Russian assist. The North Korean program is taken into account extra profitable, having produced a a lot wider vary of variants, and having seen the missiles deployed from a way more numerous vary of launch automobiles.
In June Ukrainian sources reported that the KN-23 had achieved a brand new improved stage of accuracy with a Round Error Possible of 1–5 meters. Enhancements to precision strike capabilities could also be the results of each suggestions from fight testing and technological advances in North Korea, with funding from exports to Russia having supplied a substantial enhance to the nation’s defence sector. The Russian-Ukrainian Conflict has successfully develop into the world’s largest live-fire testing surroundings for North Korean ballistic missiles. Reasonably than relying solely on home testing beneath managed situations, the Korean Individuals’s Army is now in a position to observe how its missiles carry out in a excessive depth battle zone whereas gathering precious knowledge on reliability, accuracy, digital warfare resistance and terminal efficiency beneath actual fight situations.
Among the many variants of the KN-23 developed, the KN-23B represents a bigger variant with an prolonged vary a a lot enlarged 2,500 kilogram warhead. It was first check fired on March 25, 2021, and because of its bigger measurement used a ten-wheel transporter erector launcher the place the unique KN-23 used an eight-wheel launcher. The missile’s longer vary and bigger warhead are thought to have made it extremely prized within the Ukrainian theatre. In October 2025 North Korea’s defence sector unveiled a successor to the KN-23, the Hwasong-11Ma, which makes use of a lift-generating hypersonic glide physique and small management surfaces, and seems to be the system of its type ever to combine a hypersonic glide automobile.
Partly because of the sharp contraction each of Russia’s defence sector and of its floor forces within the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, Russian forces have develop into closely reliant on procuring defence gear from North Korea. The outcomes of an investigation by Reuters printed in April 2025, for instance, highlighted that many Russian artillery models had come to rely nearly completely on ammunition equipped by North Korea, with at the very least six Russian artillery models sourcing between 50 and 100% of their munitions from the nation. North Korean armaments will not be solely in lots of instances extra available than their Russian counterparts, but additionally usually have vital efficiency benefits over their Russian counterparts.
