Rare North Korean Long-Range Cannon Spotted Heading West in Russia

Rare North Korean long-range cannon geo-located to flatcars heading west in Siberia may be Pyonyang’s latest arms reinforcement to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, news reports and open source researchers said on Friday.

The popular pro-Russia Telegram channel Vodevoda Veshchaet (150,000+ subscribers) was the first to publish images of heavy artillery pieces on flatcars. The single photograph was cropped in a possible attempt to conceal the location.

“We have an ally who keeps his promises! To him we say a giant ‘thank you!’” the Kremlin-supporting information platform captioned the picture, first published on Thursday afternoon.

The 170mm self-propelled M-1989 Koksan artillery system is a long-range cannon manufactured only by North Korea. Its greatest combat use was during the 1980s, where it was used as a counter-battery weapon by Iran’s military during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. At the time, both North Korea and Iran were under near-total sanctions against arms shipments.

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Open-source researchers were quick to hunt down additional, uncropped images of the cannon and a second gun system, and within hours had geo-located the train’s location to a railroad line passing apartment buildings in the central Russian Siberia city of Krasnoyarsk, some 4,400 kilometers (2,734 miles) by rail from the Russia-North Korea border.

The research group Status-6 estimated the location of the train to the west-bound track at the Krasnoyarksk-Severniy railroad station, at 56°04’09.8”N 92°55’12.9”E. Kyiv Post review of images confirmed that fix. The markings on the flatcar and tie-downs on the cannon visible in the images are typical for Russian state railroad transportation of Russian army equipment.

By Friday, speculation was wide in Russian and Ukrainian media that the weapons now in Russia were en route for combat against Ukraine’s military, but that was not confirmed. Were the Russian army to receive and field Koskan cannon, it would become only the third military in the world – a fter North Korea’s and Iran’s – to operate the gun.

Pyongyang developed the Koksan system in the 1970s using old T-55 tank chassis imported from Romania via Egypt, in evasion of international arms embargos on North Korea. The M1989 is an updated version.

Fitted with a cannon capable of firing a heavy shell out to 40 kilometers (25 miles) with conventional munitions and 60 kilometers  (37 miles) with rocket-assisted munitions, the Koksan potentially could help the Russian military redress its tactical disadvantage against NATO-standard artillery used by the Ukrainian military, which typically outrange comparable Russian pieces by 5-10 kilometers (3-6 miles).

Although theoretically more than capable of trading fire even with the most powerful Western systems operated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), the North Korean gun would probably not be likely to shift the direction of the artillery war in Ukraine significantly, the Ukrainian military research group Defense Express reported.

The weapon effectively is a North Korean update of German World War II artillery technology, and the gun’s slow two-shot-a-minute rate of fire, inherent inaccuracy, and heavy wear on barrels each time a shell is sent downrange would limit a Koskan cannon’s ability to take on faster-firing, similar-ranged NATO cannon, a Nov. 14 article said.

The North Korean weapon’s tank-similar size and weight, along with the logistical burden of transporting and loading individual shells weighing 110 kilograms (243 pounds) each would probably limit the relatively inaccurate gun to long-range harassment shots, the article said.

Russia and North Korea, on Nov. 12, ratified a mutual self-defense agreement committing the signees to provide military assistance if either goes to war, and if needed, to commit troops.

According to Ukrainian military intelligence, a 10,000-man North Korean troop entered Russia in late October, had deployed to Russia’s western Kursk region by Nov. 7 and first saw combat against Ukrainian forces invading Russia around Nov. 10.

Russian state-controlled media have contrasted growing military cooperation between Moscow and Pyonyang with American arms deliveries to Ukraine.

Reportedly, in exchange for transferring 1.5 million artillery shells, troops and now heavy artillery to the Kremlin, North Korea will receive missile technology and food from Russia.

From 2022-24 the administration of US President Joe Biden (D) followed a restrained military assistance policy towards Ukraine for fears of escalating conflict with Russia. Kyiv has particularly criticized a US ban on Ukraine’s use of high-tech weapons for deep strikes in Russia, and slow Pentagon procurement delivering only a fraction of assistance the White House as promised.

Officials in the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump (R), and Trump himself in campaigning, have said that American arms assistance to Ukraine is a waste of US taxpayer money and should be stopped.

In a July campaign speech covered by the news agency CNN, Trump referenced a recent North Korean intercontinental missile test and told prospective US voters he “got along with” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. We stopped the missile launches from North Korea. Now North Korea is acting up again.”