Low-Visibility Stealth Corvette Found In North Korean port: NK News Report

A modern style corvette equipped with low observable radar has been found in North Korea, according to the images obtained by NK pro.

The captured high-resolution photos also reveal that the corvette has been spotted on northeastern port of Najin in Rason, NK News reported today.

Two sets of images were taken at different times in 2016. The images show a heavily armed, 77-meter long vessel with radar cross-section (RCS) reducing features docked adjacent to support ship that is helicopter-cable.

The corvette is equipped with two Kumsong-3 anti-ship cruise missile launchers, a short-range surface-to-air missile system, torpedo launchers and rotary canons. The reduced-RCS corvette also includes capacity for large caliber naval cannon.

The two vessels, combined with two similar types docked near North Korea’s west coast port of Nampo, provide evidence of North Korea’s efforts in building naval assets in many ways this obviously pose as addition to the nuclear threat that the US and South Korea currently facing.

“These ships are the culmination of over 20 years of experimentation with new naval warfare concepts, showing clearly the direction that the North Korea is heading towards," said Joost Oliemans and Stijn Mitzer, the NK Pro contributors said in their analysis of the vessels’ capabilities.

The corvettes are addition to new capabilities to the weapons that the isolated country already has, such as ballistic missile submarines, stealthy surface effect ships, and a number of other smaller modern ship designs.

The photos of the low-observable corvette tell us that it is similar to the Myanmar Navy’s frigate UMS Tabinshwehti, a senior researcher at the Korea Defense and Security Forum (KODEF) Kim Min Seok said.

“Myanmar has built this ship, and equipped it with weapons from Italy, China, Russia, and North Korea,” Seok added. Moreover, Tabinshwehti, unlike the DPRK version, also includes a helicopter hangar.