South Korean cruise missile
The Hyunmoo-3 is a supersonic cruise missile fielded by the South Korean military designed by Agency for Defense Development (ADD). The name Hyunmoo (Korean: 현무) comes from the mythical Black Tortoise (Chinese: 玄武)[4] described as the "Guardian of the Northern Sky", perhaps hinting North Korea.
Design and development
As a signatory of the multilateral Missile Technology Control Regime, South Korea agrees to refrain from importing a non-indigenous ballistic missile with a warhead larger than 500 kg, or a range of more than 300 km.[5] Historically a bilateral agreement between the ROK and US additionally limited indigenous South Korean produced missiles in both range and warhead size. Therefore, heavy emphasis was put on developing long-range cruise missiles by the South Korean government. With the introduction of Hyunmoo-3, the Republic of Korea Army created the Missile Command in order to efficiently manage these missiles.
Despite the name, the Hyunmoo-3 bears no resemblance to the previous Hyunmoo SSM, which were improved versions of Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles that were converted into short-range high-speed surface-to-surface ballistic missiles in response to North Korea's Scud-B and Nodong-1 missile threats. Instead, the new missile's designs are strikingly similar to the United States Tomahawk cruise missile. It is powered by a turbofan engine, and has a maximum payload of 500 kilograms (1,100 lb) of conventional explosive. The guidance systems consist of inertial guidance system and global positioning system.
Variants
Hyunmoo-3A, which was nicknamed "Eagle-1" (독수리-1) during the testing, has a range of 500 km, while Hyunmoo-3B, nicknamed "Eagle-2" (독수리-2) Cheonryong (천룡 순항 미사일), has a range of 1,000 kilometres (620 mi). Hyunmoo-3C, or "Eagle-3" (독수리-3), will be capable of striking its target up to 1,500 km (930 mi) away. This is a significant improvement from Hyunmoo I which had a range of 180 km (110 mi) and Hyunmoo-2A, which only has a range of 300 km (190 mi), both of which were ballistic and not cruise missiles.
Sejong the Great-class destroyers and KSS-III-class submarines will be equipped with these Chonryong[6][7] submarine-launched cruise missiles inside their K-VLS cells.[2]
A Hyunmoo-3B air-launched cruise missile with over 500 km (310 mi) range exists and it is called Boramae.[2][7][6]
A submarine-launched cruise missile called the Haeseong III is designed to be launched underwater from submarines.[8] It is actually the designation for the Hyunmoo-3 cruise missile when launched from a submarine and is unrelated to the SSM-700K Haeseong missile design.[9]
Operators
References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Hyunmoo-3.
