The Nongo class is a term used by the US Department of Defense to identify a series of new medium-size warships built by North Korea starting in the 2000s. Few such vessels are believed to be in service, but they appear to form the core of a modernized Korean People's Navy.[2]
| Class overview | |
|---|---|
| Name | Nongo class |
| Operators |  Korean People's Navy |
| In service | 2000s |
| Completed | 6[1] |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement | 200 tons |
| Length | 35 m (114 ft 10 in) or 40 m (131 ft 3 in) (according to the subclass) |
| Beam | 12 m (39 ft 4 in) |
| Propulsion | Surface effect |
| Speed | 48 knots (89 km/h; 55 mph) |
| Armament | Various (76 mm 57 mm, or 30 mm guns, Kh-35 missiles, according to the sub-class) |
Features and design
editIn late 1980s the North Korean shipbuilding industry experimented with a large warship with an innovative catamaran-hull design, the Soho-class frigate. After the 1990s, when the North Korean economy showed some signs of recovering after the great famine, the Korean People's Navy started introducing again this design to modernize its fleet of medium-size vessels.
North Koreans implemented the catamaran design, adopting Surface Effect Ship technology. The design is relatively advanced, and adopted by few Navies in the world. The first vessels of the class (the "pure" Nongo) appears to have also stealth lines. Considering the lack of official north Korean released data, most of features, design and details are speculations of analysts after observation of satellite pictures.
Weapons
editWeapons appears to be related with the different sub-classes, and different evaluations were given by analysts. The original stealth SES Nongo show only surface artillery weapons: a gun of 57 mm (2.2 in) and a turret of 30 mm (1.2 in) guns.
The missile boat variants at first were valued with one gun of 85 mm (3.3 in), one or two turrets of 30 mm and unknown kind of anti-ship missiles.
Later, it surfaced after North Korean propaganda video that the missile boats are indeed armed with the relatively effective Russian Kh-35 missiles. Also the gun appears to be different, a reversed-engined turret of 76 mm (3.0 in) (related probably to the Iranian Fajr-27, a reversed-engine gun of the famous Italian OTO Melara 76 mm).[3]
Despite being probably less advanced than their South Korean rivals, the Nongo-class missile boats could on paper face the South Korean Gumdoksuri-class patrol vessel sharing the same artillery (76 mm) and anti-ship missiles (even if the South Korean vessels are larger).
In January 2015 the first pictures of a vessel (of the stealth sub-class), employed in testing a reversed-engineered missile Kh-35, were released by KCNA.[4]
Subclasses
editAt least 3 subclasses are known:
- Original stealth SES
- "A" type missile boats (not-stealth, size reduced)
- "B" type missile boats (not-stealth, size reduced)