North Korea Missile Test: Cluster Warhead on Cruise Missile

North Korea has tested a cluster munition warhead on one of its strategic cruise missiles, extending to its low-flying strike weapons a capability it had demonstrated on tactical ballistic missiles only two days before. The country’s Missile Administration stated on November 3 that the trial had taken place the previous day under the supervision of General Kim Jong-sik, a member of the ruling party’s Central Military Commission, and combined a test of what it called a middle-sized dispersal warhead with a flight test of the missile’s ability to dive vertically onto its target. It claimed the warhead was “capable of turning into ashes a target area of 5 to 6 hectares”, but named neither the missile nor its range. The test indicates that Pyongyang now treats area attack warheads as standard equipment across its strike arsenal rather than as an experimental program.

The cruise missile trial followed an October 31 launch of Hwasong-11D tactical ballistic missiles from near Chongju towards the Yellow Sea, carrying what the Missile Administration called a Standard Type 2 cluster warhead and claimed could devastate 12 to 13 hectares. The administration stated after that launch that frontline units would be able to use four types of cluster warhead by the end of the year, a deadline now less than two months away. It was at least the third publicly disclosed cluster warhead trial of 2026, with Kim Jong Un having personally observed five Hwasong-11 family missiles fired on April 19 to test cluster bomb and fragmentation mine warheads. The two latest tests came only days after the country fired around ten short-range ballistic missiles from Wonsan on October 29, its 17th ballistic missile launch of the year.

The Missile Administration’s Cruise Missile System Institute stated that it had improved the missile’s manoeuvrability in the terminal phase so that it could strike vertically, with the dive adjusted to the natural and geographical features of the target area. A steep final dive allows a dispenser to release its submunitions directly above a target sheltered by hills or buildings, which is particularly relevant to the valleys and dense urban terrain south of the Demilitarized Zone. The smaller footprint claimed for the cruise missile warhead, around half that claimed for the ballistic missile design, is consistent with the lighter payload of a cruise missile. North Korea first tested what it called a new type of long-range cruise missile on September 11 and 12, 2021, claiming flights of 1,500 kilometres, and it fired the Pulhwasal-3-31 from a submarine as recently as October 14.

The tests come amid rising tension on the land border, where mines exploded in the western sector of the Demilitarized Zone on September 21 and wounded three South Korean soldiers, and where Kim Yo-jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, threatened to deploy more tactical strike weapons on October 19. Cluster munitions are banned by a 2008 convention that neither North Korea nor South Korea has joined. Cruise missile launches, unlike ballistic missile launches, are not prohibited by United Nations Security Council resolutions, and none of the area figures Pyongyang has published for its cluster warheads has been independently verified.