North Korea's HIMARS-style launcher moves into production

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un toured major munitions factories over three days, from Sept. 16 to 18, inspecting weapons production that reportedly included a mobile rocket launcher Western analysts have compared to the U.S. Army’s HIMARS system, state media reported Sept. 19.

The ruling Workers’ Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said Kim, the party’s general secretary, visited “important munitions industry enterprises” to check on production conditions. Kim told factory officials the military must “constantly load the most powerful and overwhelming strategic force” into the armed forces, according to the report, and pressed the plants to expand output.

The visit follows a pattern Kim has repeated for years, touring weapons factories every few months and calling for faster, larger-scale production. He made similar visits in August 2023, January 2024 and December 2025, each time emphasizing what state media described as the “paramount importance” of missile and artillery output to the country’s war readiness.

The launcher system tied to this week’s visit first appeared publicly at a 2023 military parade and was tested for the first time on May 26, 2026, alongside two other weapons: an upgraded 240mm guided rocket and a tactical cruise missile North Korea says uses artificial intelligence for terminal guidance.

Photos released by North Korean state media at the time showed a wheeled vehicle carrying a small number of launch tubes, a configuration that resembles the U.S. Army’s M142 HIMARS, a truck-mounted system that fires precision-guided rockets from a single launcher and has seen extensive combat use in Ukraine. South Korea’s military detected the May test independently, tracking projectiles that flew roughly 80 km (50 miles) toward the Yellow Sea, though Seoul did not confirm North Korea’s specific claims about the systems involved.

Kim ordered the accelerated deployment of the AI-guided cruise missile to front-line artillery units near the South Korean border after that May test, calling the results “a clear signal” of North Korea’s military progress. This week’s factory tour suggests the program has moved from testing toward production, though North Korea did not disclose how many units of any system have been built or where the factories are located, following its usual practice of withholding exact locations from state media coverage.

The factory visit came the same week North Korea rejected a resolution the International Atomic Energy Agency adopted criticizing its nuclear weapons program. North Korean officials said the country’s status as a nuclear power is permanently written into domestic law and does not require international recognition, a position Pyongyang has maintained consistently in response to IAEA and U.N. criticism.

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