North Korea said it has test-fired a new high-speed precision-guided torpedo weapons system equipped with artificial intelligence. Pyongyang has unveiled a series of new weapons in recent weeks while playing down South Korea's hypersonic glide vehicle test results, in an apparent bid to assert superiority in advanced weapons competition.
The Korean Central News Agency reported on the 17th that the Academy of Defense Sciences, the Missile Administration and the Underwater Weapons Research Bureau "conducted an underwater torpedo test launch on the 15th to verify the results of a technical upgrade to a new torpedo weapons system," according to diplomatic and security sources on the 18th.
"Artificial intelligence technology has been introduced into the target search and guidance functions of the new high-speed precision-guided torpedo," KCNA said. The test "proved the performance of the rocket propulsion device and the core technology for raising propulsion efficiency, which was completed through more than 180 tests over the past five years," it claimed.
Because North Korea attached the term "high-speed" to the torpedo and also claimed it carries a rocket propulsion device, the weapon may be a supercavitating torpedo, which forms a layer of gas bubbles underwater to reduce water resistance and travel at high speed. The claim that AI technology was introduced into the torpedo's target search and guidance functions is seen as intended to showcase strike accuracy.
Meanwhile, North Korea has unveiled a series of new weapons this month, including a hypersonic intermediate-range missile and a submarine-launched strategic cruise missile, in a display of asymmetric capabilities. In particular, after the South Korean government disclosed on the 8th that it had succeeded in its first test launch of a hypersonic glide vehicle, North Korea on the 15th raised the possibility that the flight had failed to achieve actual hypersonic speed, disparaging Seoul's technological achievement.
Yang Moo-jin, chair professor at the University of North Korean Studies, said North Korea's recent pattern of disparaging South Korea's hypersonic missile test while continuing its own weapons system tests is partly meant to serve as justification for advancing its nuclear forces. "On the other hand, it appears intended to insist on its own superiority in an arms race centered on showing off the diversification of its nuclear forces," Yang said.