South Korea has become the eighth country in the world to be armed with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Yesterday, on September 8, the Yonhap news Agency reported that the Defense Development Agency (ADD) of the Republic of Korea announced the successful launch of the SLBM.
The launch was carried out from the Dosan Ahn Changho submarine. Earlier, it was already reported about the successful test of the SLBM from this submarine, but then it was about testing the rocket layout. In August of this year, a launch was carried out from a flooded barge, but now a combat missile was successfully launched from a submarine that was in an underwater position.
Technical data of the Dosan Ahn Changho submarine of the KSS-III project
Image source: navalnews.com
According to Yonhap, the South Korean SLBM is built on the basis of the Hyunmoo-2B ballistic missile with a target range of up to 500 km. The version for underwater launch was codenamed Hyunmoo 4-4.
South Korea has become the eighth country in the world to develop SLBMs (after the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France, India, China and North Korea). The South Korean development is unique in that a diesel-electric submarine is used as a carrier of ballistic missiles, not a nuclear one, as in other countries, but a diesel-electric submarine.