KN-25

The world's biggest guided rocket artillery — the KN-25 is North Korea's 600mm "super-large multiple rocket launcher," a deliberate hybrid that fires ballistic-missile-sized guided rockets to 380 kilometers on flat, defense-stressing trajectories. Pyongyang folds it into "nuclear counterattack" drills, claims a tactical nuclear warhead fits it, and has mass-produced more than 80 launchers. And unlike the KN-23 missiles and Koksan guns it ships to Russia, the KN-25 has never been confirmed leaving home — a negative finding that says as much about its role in North Korea's own war plan as any test.

Overview

The KN-25 — a US designation; DPRK state media only ever calls it the "600mm super-large multiple rocket launcher," and its domestic name is unknown — is the system where rocket artillery and ballistic missiles collapse into one category. Each rocket is about 8.2 meters long, roughly three tonnes at launch, guided by inertial and satellite navigation, and has demonstrated a 380 km range — deep enough to hold every airbase and port in South Korea at risk from anywhere in the North. US Forces Korea and Seoul accordingly classify it as a short-range ballistic missile; analysts at FRS describe "a guided artillery rocket with an unusually flat trajectory," built to fly under and saturate missile defenses. It fires from a family of tracked and wheeled launchers with four to six tubes each; 30 tracked TELs were handed to the army in a single ceremony in January 2023, 50 wheeled launchers in another in February 2026, and South Korea's Defense Intelligence Agency estimated more than 80 launchers built by March 2026. Pyongyang claims the Hwasan-31 tactical nuclear warhead fits the rocket and drills the units in simulated nuclear strikes. With roughly 90 rockets fired across 25 test events, it is North Korea's most-fired missile system — and, pointedly, one it appears to be keeping for itself: no transfer to Russia has ever been confirmed, in contrast to the KN-23 and the M1989 Koksan.

Development

The KN-25 broke cover in the summer of 2019, amid North Korea's post-Hanoi sprint of new short-range systems. First test-fires came on 31 July and 2 August 2019 under Kim Jong Un's supervision — announced as a "new type large-caliber multiple launch guided rocket system" — with CSIS Missile Threat dating the first unambiguous flight test to late August, when two rockets flew 380 km at a 97 km apogee, still the demonstrated maximum, per Wikipedia. The 2019–2020 campaign then worked a single problem: salvo tempo. Launch intervals fell from ~17–19 minutes to 30 seconds by November 2019 and 20 seconds by March 2020, when analysts at the Open Nuclear Network read the tests as pre-service verification. From autumn 2022 the system was folded into "tactical nuclear operation units" drills; in March 2023 Pyongyang displayed the Hwasan-31 warhead as compatible with the 600mm rocket (a claim, never demonstrated), per NCNK. Production scaled in public theater: 30 tracked six-tube TELs "gifted" to the party plenum on 1 January 2023, an 18-rocket salvo in May 2024, a new six-tube wheeled launcher that September, mass production of the tracked launcher revealed in May 2025, and 50 five-tube wheeled launchers transferred in a February 2026 ceremony, per Defence Security Asia. A January 2026 "upgraded" test carried a telling discrepancy: Pyongyang claimed four rockets; Japanese tracking saw two. By March 2026, NK Pro counted ~90 rockets fired across 25 events — the most-tested missile in the DPRK arsenal.

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