“CUSTOMER FEEDBACK”
Military expert Yang said his security contacts in Ukraine had also independently reported improvements in the latest batches of North Korean missiles.
“As they are making missiles and getting feedback from the customers – the Russian army – then they have more experience making more reliable missiles,” he said.
The sources and Yang said it was not clear what modifications North Korea had made.
The military source said forensic analysis conducted on debris had not identified changes to the design of the missiles, although there had been very little debris left to analyse.
Two possible explanations were the missiles being fitted with better navigation systems or with a steering mechanism to help manoeuvring, the source said.
According to Yang, other factors that could improve accuracy include better targeting information for crews, new guidance system components provided by Russia and improvements based on the data and experience North Korean scientists have gathered in the war.
Earlier in the war, the missiles had an accuracy of 1-3 kilometres, but the most recent had an accuracy of between 50 and 100 metres, the military source said in an interview in Kyiv on Jan 27, disclosing a previously unreported assessment for the first time.
The source declined to publicly disclose what had been targeted, where the missiles were fired from or the dates of the attacks, citing military secrecy.
Russia began firing North Korean K-23, K-23A and K-24 short-range ballistic missiles at Ukraine towards the end of 2023 and has since fired around 100, the source said. Kyiv says Russia has also received millions of artillery shells and thousands of troops from Pyongyang to help its war effort.
North Korea is expanding a complex that manufactures K-23 missiles, Reuters reported in November.
In February 2024, Ukraine’s top prosecutor cast doubt on the reliability of North Korea’s little-known weaponry, saying that only two out of 24 missiles that had been fired up to that point had been “relatively accurate.”
The advance in the weapons’ precision appeared suddenly, the source said, after months of inaccurate launches. The new assessment was based on where the missiles – identified as North Korean through examinations at blast sites – fell in relation to the presumed target in the vicinity, the source said.
Reuters could not independently verify the sources’ assessment.
