After Russia, now N Korea unveils underwater nuclear drone: What we know about ‘Haeil’

North Korea has claimed it has successfully tested an underwater nuclear attack drone. While the Hermit Kingdom said it tested a drone designed to generate a gigantic “radioactive tsunami” that would destroy naval strike groups and ports, analysts remain skeptical. The claim comes in the backdrop of the United States reportedly planning to deploy aircraft carrier strike groups and other advanced assets to waters off the Korean Peninsula. Let’s take a closer look: What is an underwater drone? As per The Verge, an underwater drone is essentially an unmanned miniature submarine. Such drones are autonomous and are guided by onboard computers and sensors. According to the Bard Center for Study of the Drone, underwater drones have existed since the 1950s. Today, there are over 250 such drones in service. According to Military.com, the US Navy first deployed underwater drones from submarines in 2015. “Now you are talking about a submarine [commanding officer] who can essentially be in two places at the same time — with a UUV [unmanned underwater vehicle] out deployed which can do dull, dirty and dangerous type missions. This allows the submarine to be doing something else at the same time," Rear Admiral Joseph Tofalo told the website. What do we know about North Korea’s new weapon? The North Korean drone is named “Haeil,” a Korean word meaning tidal waves or tsunamis. The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper published photos of Kim smiling next to a large, torpedo-shaped object at an unspecified indoor facility, but didn’t identify it. Other photos published with the same article showed sea-surface tracks supposedly caused by the drone’s underwater trajectory and a pillar of water exploding up into the air, possibly caused by what state media described as an underwater detonation of a mock nuclear weapon carried by the drone. KCNA said the drone was deployed Tuesday off the North’s eastern coast, travelled underwater for nearly 60 hours, and detonated a test warhead at a target standing for an enemy port. It said the test verified the operational reliability of the drone, which it said the North has been developing since 2012 and tested more 50 times in the past two years, although the weapon was never mentioned before in state media until Friday. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the attack drone can be “deployed at any coast and port or towed by a surface ship for operation.” The weapon’s mission is to “stealthily infiltrate into operational waters and make a super-scale radioactive tsunami … to destroy naval striker groups and major operational ports of the enemy,” it added. [caption id=“attachment_12345882” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] This photo provided by the North Korean government, shows what it says is an underwater blast of test warhead loaded to an unmanned underwater nuclear attack craft “Haeil”. AP[/caption] The testing of the purported “nuclear underwater attack drone” was part of a three-day exercise that simulated nuclear attacks on unspecified South Korean targets, which also included cruise missile launches Wednesday. KCNA said the North’s latest tests were aimed at alerting the United States and South Korea of a brewing “nuclear crisis” as they continue with their “intentional, persistent and provocative war drills.” It said the tests were supervised by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who vowed to make his rivals “plunge into despair.” Russia’s Poseidon drone Russia in January claimed to have produced the first set of nuclear-capable super torpedoes being developed for deployment on the Belgorod nuclear submarine. Little is known about Poseidon – also known as Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System – in the public domain. What we do know is that it is essentially a cross between a torpedo and a drone which can be launched from a nuclear submarine. Russia’s defence ministry has shown videos of the 24-metre Poseidon, known as Kanyon by NATO, including simulations showing it destroying an enemy aircraft carrier and hitting the shoreline. Vice quoted intel sources as saying Poseidon weighs more than 200,000 pounds, and has a diameter of around six feet.

It is capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional warheads.

The Poseidon torpedoes will be carried by the K-329 Belgorod, a special-purpose nuclear submarine that was built by the Sevmash Shipyard. It is so large that the Belgorod nuclear submarine can only handle six such weapons – making it the biggest torpedo in history, as per Vice. [caption id=“attachment_12345892” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Russia’s Belgorod nuclear submarine. Wikimedia Commons[/caption] US and Russian officials have both described Poseidon as a new category of retaliatory weapon, capable of triggering radioactive ocean swells to render coastal cities uninhabitable. TASS said the main components of Poseidon, including a nuclear reactor to give the torpedo its own power source, had been successfully completed. The crew of the Belgorod nuclear submarine has also completed tests with models of the torpedo, TASS said. Putin first announced what would become known as Poseidon in 2018, saying it was a fundamentally new type of strategic nuclear weapon, confirming it would have its own nuclear power supply. In the 2018 speech, Putin said the range of the torpedo would be unlimited and that it could operate at extreme depths at a speed many times that of any submarine or other torpedoes. They are very low noise, have high maneuverability and are practically indestructible for the enemy. There is no weapon that can counter them in the world today," Putin said. The United States said in its Nuclear Posture Review in 2022 that Russia and China “continue to expand and diversify their nuclear capabilities, to include novel and destabilising systems.” “Russia is pursuing several novel nuclear-capable systems designed to hold the U.S. homeland or Allies and partners at risk,” according to the Posture Review. Last year, the US Naval Institute said Russia’s development of Poseidon turned assumptions about submarine-launched nuclear weapons upside down.

“Perhaps most frightening, this nuclear weapon has the potential for autonomous operation,” the institute said.

“A fully operational Kanyon would have an incredible strategic impact,” it said in an article. “As a new delivery platform, it is not covered by current nuclear arms treaties.” But analysts told CNN there seem to differences between the Haeil and the Poseidon – namely that it is conventionally powered and not shot out of a submarine. Impossible to verify, say analysts Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, said that it’s impossible to verify North Korea’s claims about the drone’s capabilities or that it had tested the system dozens of times. But, he said, the North is intending to communicate that the weapon has enough range to reach all South Korean ports. Ankit Panda, a senior analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, questioned the wisdom of North Korea devoting resources to the drone system as a means of delivery versus its ballistic missiles when it has limited amounts of nuclear materials suitable for weapons. “This un-crewed underwater vehicle will be vulnerable to anti-submarine warfare capabilities if it were to deploy beyond North Korea’s coastal waters. It will also be susceptible to preemptive strikes when in port,” said Panda. “Indeed, the US and South Korea would have incentives in a crisis to preempt any such systems before they could deploy.”

Panda on Twitter said it could not be ruled out that the announcement was “an attempt at deception/psyop”.

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The idea that Pyongyang has “a nuclear-capable underwater drone should be met with skepticism,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “Pyongyang’s claims about a new weapons system are not the same as a credible demonstration of capability,” he added. Even so, the claim was “shocking,” Cheong Seong-chang of the private Sejong Institute told AFP. If true, it is hard to see how Seoul “could respond to such a formidable new weapon from North Korea that (it says) can completely destroy the South’s major operational ports.” Hong Min, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, called it the first of its kind. “It is very difficult to be detected in advance by any reconnaissance or interceptor assets that South Korea and the United States have so far,” Hong added. “North Korea is showing a behavioural pattern of responding with ’nuclear weapons’ to all military responses against the past, ongoing and future [US-South Korea] joint exercises,” he said. The KCNA statement also indicates “Pyongyang is more than ready to use its tactical nuclear weapons at any time,” An Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher, told AFP. “This obviously further strengthens Kim’s justification for his future nuclear tests.” North Korea is believed to have dozens of nuclear warheads and may be capable of fitting them on older weapons systems, such as Scuds or Rodong missiles. However, there are different assessments on how far it has advanced in engineering those warheads to fit on the new weapons it has developed at a rapid pace, which might require further technological upgrades and nuclear tests. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.