It was so shocking that a long-range anti-tank missile called "Golden Nail" was born. According to global network reports, North Korea held a grand military parade on July 27 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War in Korea. The latest long-range anti-tank missiles were shown at the parade. Judging by the size of the launch box, the missile is a long-range anti-tank missile comparable to China's Red Arrow 10 and Israel's spikes.
The new anti-tank missile, which was first exhibited in 2018, is based on the design of the North Korean-made six-wheeled armored vehicle "Ma". Since then, he has participated in three more KPA parades. Like many of North Korea's new weapons, it was not known until it was unveiled at a military parade. From a glimpse of the parade, only rough conclusions can be drawn from the outside world.
Because the South Korean army and the US military stationed in South Korea have a high level of mechanized armor technology, while North Korea's own armor technology performance is relatively backward, the Korean Peninsula is facing very large armor pressure. Therefore, he believes that the development of anti-tank missiles is very important, and there is a high demand for new high-performance, powerful anti-tank missiles. Judging from the equipment of military parades in recent years, the North Korean military industry has explored technical routes such as laser braking, image control, and data transmission, and has achieved a number of demonstration results.
The Israelis are clearly puzzled by the new long-range anti-tank missiles that North Korea demonstrated at this parade. This missile is very similar to Israel's long-range Spike anti-tank missile. The rocket engine is in the tail and there are no wires. Four large wings were placed in the center of the projectile body, which were folded in a large aspect ratio. It adopts a high-throw trajectory and has a high angle of incidence when hitting a target. This is a typical image-guided anti-tank missile attack. The missile rises high to find a target, then dives to attack.
This new long-range anti-tank missile can be considered a North Korean version of the "spike". It was most likely developed by North Korea in response to South Korea's import of long-range vehicle-mounted Spike-NLOS multipurpose missiles from Israel.
Back in 2010, North and South Korea engaged in a fierce artillery battle near the 38th parallel on the west coast. South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island was heavily bombarded by North Korean artillery, causing a large number of casualties and losing face for South Korea. To prevent such tragedies from happening again, the South Korean military introduced the Spike-NLOS long-range multipurpose missile mounted on Israeli vehicles in 2011. The missile was launched from a mobile vehicle and installed on a Kia car. KM250 series truck chassis and "Sand Cat" armored vehicle chassis. It was mainly used on Bailing Island and Yeonpyeong Island, specifically against artillery.
The Israeli "Spike-NLOS" missile uses a two-way data link + thermal imager, which can accurately hit North Korean coastal artillery. The Spike-NLOS missile has a range of more than 25 kilometers, exceeding the range of most North Korean Army artillery confronted it. Therefore, North Korea urgently needs a long-range anti-tank missile with similar performance.
North Korea's Golden Spike missiles are likely to use image guidance mode. Equipped with a TV or infrared viewfinder, it combines automatic image control and manual control. It can automatically lock, track and destroy targets with white light or infrared images captured by the seeker, equivalent to achieving this through photos. Fully autonomous driving.
The launch device of the Golden Spike missile has a device similar to a two-way datalink transceiver antenna. Since the rear of the missile is a rocket engine and there are no wires, this excludes the fiber-optic guidance mode, so the missile may use radio data transmission, which can automatically lock onto the target and provide "human-" guidance. It can be transmitted using a radio data connection using the chassis of an armored vehicle or civilian vehicle, and the firing range can exceed 20 km.
China also has several new missiles, including the Tianlei-1 and Red Arrow 20/50, which are similar. The Tianlei-1 rocket was developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. It weighs about 80 kg, has a diameter of 180 mm and a maximum range of 20 km. It can be equipped with Z-10 helicopters and can also be launched from tanks and Warrior 3 high-mobility combat vehicles. Tianlei-1 adopts TV/infrared image seeker and two-way data link to search for images, and has a variety of combat mode controls such as "lock before launch + ignore after launch" and "lock after launch + person in the chain".
The Sky Thunder missile is a large family of modular missiles using image guidance. At first, it also clashed with a series of air-to-ground weapons called Sky Thunder. Later, the model of the air-to-ground weapon series of North Industry was merged into GB-XX, so the model name "Tianlei" belonged to aerospace science and technology.
At present, there are models such as Tianlei No. 1 to Tianlei No. 7. For example, the Tianlei-2 missile is a small UAV air-to-ground missile, the Tianlei-3 is a medium-range air-to-surface missile, and the Tianlei-4 barrel-fired image-guided individual anti-missile missile. - aviation missiles. - Tank rockets. The Tianlei-7 missile is the largest and is an improved export version of the YJ-88 air-to-surface missile. This series of missiles has been publicly exhibited at the Zhuhai Air Show since 2016 and has received a number of export orders.
Developed by China North Industries Group, the Hongjian-20/50 was first launched at the 2022 Zhuhai Air Show. It is an over-the-horizon heavy anti-tank missile with a range of 20 or 50 km. It adopts broadband wireless data communication + image control, directly adopts high-power vertical transmission, has follow-up launch capability and multi-target strike capability, and can load three high-power warrior vehicles.
The Red Arrow-20/50 missile can hit enemy targets that are not in the shooter's direct line of sight and are obscured by other objects. It also has a patrol mode, which can cruise over a predetermined theater for a long time to perform battlefield reconnaissance, target control and other combat missions. The Red Arrow-20/50 is currently the best long-range anti-tank missile in the world, and its performance instantly surpasses that of Israel's spike NLOS.