Following the go to of Russian President Vladimir Putin to North Korea on June 19, hypothesis concerning the doable way forward for the 2 neighboring states’ relationship has been widespread. This has largely centered on the opportunity of North Korean labor and munitions exports to Russia, and transfers of Russian nuclear, area, and protection applied sciences and commodities in return.
Whereas Russia has been reported by White Home sources to be working North Korean ballistic missiles and rocket artillery programs, and to have acquired appreciable portions of artillery munitions, one usually ignored risk is that Russia might search to amass North Korean predominant battle tanks to equip its frontline forces.
Russian tank procurement was extremely conservative previous the outbreak of struggle in Ukraine, and whereas over 500 Soviet constructed T-72 tanks and a smaller variety of T-80s had been deeply modernized within the 2010s, solely 10 newly constructed tanks, T-90Ms, had been acquired that decade – averaging one tank per 12 months.
Russia started to face vital shortages of predominant battle tanks from mid-to-late 2022, because the nation expanded its floor forces whereas its armor took vital losses within the struggle’s preliminary months particularly. Stories that Russia acquired T-72 tanks from Belarusian stockpiles for refurbishment for frontline service, and subsequent affirmation that it was bringing lengthy since retired T-62s, then T-55s, out of storage for fight use, offered additional indications of main shortages.
Whereas Russia’s loss charges have diminished significantly, with the summer season of 2023 particularly having marked a turning level within the floor marketing campaign in its favor, there have additionally been indications that efforts to extend tank manufacturing have been met with underwhelming success. The place the Soviet Union managed to provide roughly 4,000 T-72 and T-80 tanks yearly in peacetime, with a major surge capability doable in wartime, Russia is regarded as struggling to achieve round 200 tanks because of critical post-Soviet industrial decline.
Russia’s tank shortages might doubtlessly present a serious opening for North Korea to emerge as a provider of armor to Russia. North Korea previously has exported domestically produced tanks to Ethiopia and Iran and modernization packages, together with options resembling laser vary finders, to improve Soviet-built tanks operated extra broadly overseas.
Obtainable data on North Korea’s newest class of predominant battle tank, the Chonma 2, signifies that it’s extra succesful than most tanks in Russian service, with a contemporary battle administration system, thermal sights, a tough kill energetic safety system, and entry to armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) rounds with a wonderful length-to-diameter ratio indicating a really excessive penetrative functionality. (Unveiled in 2020, the tank was beforehand referred to within the West because the “M2020” earlier than its precise designation was confirmed in Might.)
Whereas integration of a wholly new international tank class might trigger problems for Russia’s floor forces, and maybe most significantly would signify a serious lack of face for the nation’s personal tank business, the opportunity of Russia buying older lessons of North Korean tanks derived from Soviet designs stays extra vital.
Though North Korea is at present producing the Chonma 2 predominant battle tank for home use, and beforehand produced the Chonma-215/216 from the late Nineteen Nineties, the nation remains to be closely reliant on derivatives of the Soviet T-62, which had been domestically produced beneath license because the baseline Chonma tank. Representing the primary of three generations of indigenous North Korean tanks, the Chonma is very much like the unique T-62, and with North Korea estimated to discipline over 1,200 their export might enable Russia to considerably enlarge its fleet of T-62-type tanks.
These autos might be refurbished and modernized in North Korea, with the technological advances demonstrated by the Chonma 2 program indicating that native business is ready to equip tanks with thermal sights and different trendy fireplace controls, explosive reactive armor and energetic safety programs, in addition to extremely succesful munitions. An improve package deal might be tailor-made to Russia’s necessities relying on the required pace of supply and prices, and would are available in parallel to the refurbishment of T-62s from storage in Russia itself with subsystems resembling thermal sights to arrange them for frontline use. Because the T-62’s position within the Russian Military has solely grown, with new generations of upgrades persevering with to seem, this risk seems all of the extra vital.
With Russia having scrapped its T-62s on a major scale following the Soviet Union’s disintegration – in addition to T-64s, T-55s and different tank lessons that predated the T-72 – the continued widespread use of the tank class in North Korea gives a priceless alternative for additional acquisitions. Funding from gross sales of second-hand T-62s might assist cowl the prices of Chonma 2 acquisitions, with the brand new tank more likely to be a number of instances as expensive to provide as a result of its subtle options. Such exports might additionally present Russia with an incentive to make armored warfare associated know-how transfers to North Korea, since this might straight profit the capabilities of its personal military’s frontline models.
The return of the T-62 to the frontlines of the Russian Military’s inventories additionally raises the chance that North Korea might be relied on to provide 115mm smoothbore rounds, which aren’t utilized by another Russian tank class, and thus could not have remained in storage in vital numbers after the big majority of the T-62 fleet was scrapped.
The place beforehand the Chonma and Chonma-215/216 had been anticipated to offset their vital efficiency benefits towards innovative enemy armor with their higher suitability for mountain warfare, the Chonma 2 represents the primary North Korean tank class that seems to be genuinely internationally aggressive at a excessive degree. This displays broader traits towards the North Korean protection sector reaching a innovative degree, as in any other case seen in areas starting from hypersonic glide autos to long-range surface-to-air missile programs.
With Western sources having broadly warned that North Korea’s arms exports to Russia might significantly undermine the sanctions regime and set a precedent to permit different international locations to extra brazenly import armaments from the nation, Russia’s diversion of T-90 tanks produced for export to its personal forces doubtlessly opens the chance for higher North Korean tank exports to the third world, significantly in Africa and the Center East. Maybe extra considerably, nonetheless, is that North Korea’s place as the one main tank producer outdoors the Western sphere of affect apart from China and Russia themselves locations its business in a powerful place to capitalize on Russian shortages to doubtlessly make the most important tank exports within the nation’s historical past.
