North Korea has just shocked Me by releasing unexpected and very entertaining images of supreme leader Kim Jong-un driving around in their brand new Next Generation tank the m2020 this latest showing has given us some new insight into whether or not it's a legit main battle tank to be feared or if it's an elaborate mix of tractor parts and cardboard held together with duct tape and if you answer that wrong 10 years dungeon for you the m2020 was first unveiled in October of 2020 during a military parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of North Korea's communist Workers
Party a total of nine of these things drove down the Main Avenue during the parade sporting what look like modern Optics Fire Control Systems armor plating and even active Protection Systems I have about a million questions about this tank starting with why does it have an anti-tank guided missile on it are those a good idea or not will it be mass-produced and widely adopted and what is North Korea's experience with tank warfare in the first place but first getting into car accidents is awful and if you haven't been in on yourself then you probably know
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battle tanks they relied on about 200 of the Soviet supplied t34 tanks from Joseph Stalin which they used to great effect in the early stages of the Korean War but once the US entered the chat those North Korean tanks got busted by American Air superiority and more advanced US tanks that's oversimplifying of course but the reason I bring up the gist of that story is to illustrate the fact that North Korea does not have a ton of experience in operating modern tanks on the Tactical level in combat one of the first things you might notice
about the m2020 is just how visually distinct it is compared to what North Korea has shown off in the past historically the country has always used the derivative of the Russian t62 tank designs but trade embargos against them especially in the realm of military equipment have largely prevented North Korea from obtaining modern tank technology that's why the m2020 is supposed to be a symbol of their defense industry's ability to produce despite the fact that they're under International sanctions the tanks we do see are generally Frankenstein designs incorporating a base model t62 with various overlapping additions
from other tanks like your t-72s and your type 88s they managed to get pieces of them moving down we can see that seven road wheels mean it's not just a t62 in makeup and actually a brand new design that we haven't seen before currently North Korea Fields three tank designs you got your Chan Maho your p pungho and your s gun 915 and so between all these old tanks and new they're estimated to have between 3,500 and 4,000 tanks today typically with each newer iteration of North Korean tank a few incremental upgrades here and there
are thrown onto it but the m2020 quickly broke this trend and went absolutely balls to the wall with upgrades attempting to take a leap forward here on the turret of the m2020 sportswood appears to be an impressive diversity of sites the right side has a Commander's independent thermal viewer the Gunner site is just seen below that and a remote weapon system with its own thermal sights as well and this is where one of the Tank's strangest aspects jumps right out at you and makes you kind of scratch your head and go oh what you'll notice
it's got a dual 2 buce 5 atgm Launcher located on the right side of the turret adding anti-tank guided missiles to a main battle tank isn't a new idea but it's a very questionable one bosil Warren an American M1 tank commander in the Gulf War or an author of a few great books had a great answer for why tanks usually do not have this kind of anti-tank guided missile saying quote let's consider cost one m829 series round costs less than $10,000 while one tow missile runs about $180,000 we should also consider other parts of logistics
the tow missile weighs a bit over 60 lb while the Sabo round weighs under 46 lb finally adding a tow missile launcher to the tank really doesn't give the tank better chance to defeat enemy tanks than it already has mounted but it could significantly complicate the logistical footprint of the tank as well as operating it end quote so according to that tank expert anti-tank guided missiles wouldn't be worth the added weight added cost or added trouble I think the decision to include external atgms on a tank is probably one of the weirdest design choices for
the m2020 the launcher we typically see on vehicles like the Bradley and bmps are primarily there as a defense Ive weapon against tanks because their 25 or 30 mm Cannon lacks the power to punch through tank holes to put it in another way actual main battle tanks don't need external atgm launchers because their main cannons can deliver kill shots faster more accurately and more reliably so why then why would North Korea put one on there I of course don't know the answer for sure I don't have a direct line to Kim but I would personally
think it's what I would call a bit of military theater I know military pageantry when I see it they added those atgms because they look freaking cool or more accurately they look spooky and scary these tanks and these parades are meant to posture and scare their opponents anything they can toss on there that looks like it has teeth is good for them additionally there doesn't appear to be any kind of extra storage space for the additional missile ammo reloading would also be near impossible as the placement of the launcher of the missile on the outside
would require multiple crew members to to Dismount and reload other vehicles get around this by having rear hatches that allow the crew to stay inside the vehicle to reload but the m220 visually lacks anything of this design it's the same reason North Korea does things like this to show how tough they are there are cultural differences here that I could not even begin to wrap my head around which explain why adding on extra likely unnecessary weapons makes sense from their perspective but to dive into the actual capabilities of these missile systems the tgms that are
on the tank they are the latest North Korean cornet missile clone and according to North Korean reports they can penetrate 1,100 mm of steel armor from a range of 4 km away as well as a top attack function the launcher itself is nearly identical to the American Bradley tow launcher in appearance similar to the M2 Bradley the launcher is stowed in a vertical position and then raised to a parallel horizontal position to fire so it could be possible maybe they have the atgms because they're worried that they're t tank main Cannon cannot penetrate the whole
of the adversarial tanks just look at the fact that it's got three separate secondary weapon systems your AG gs30 automatic grenade launcher as opposed to more traditional 12.7 moment machine gun got a 762 coax mounted machine gun on there I believe some of these weapons serve the same purpose as an animals brightly colored feathers that are designed to scare off Predators the m220 contains a man turret but there has been some level of debate between experts as to whether has a use of an autoloader or not the specific layout of the turret in North Korea's
tank design history implies that it would be a crew of four with one of them being a loader however we have only seen three crew members in any press releases it could be that North Korea tank loaders are either too shy or not photogenic enough to be in front of the cameras we'll have to wait and find out it's armed with 125 mm main Cannon derived from the Russian 2A 46 this gives it an effective range of about 3,000 M firing heat or Sab rounds and 4,000 M for high explosive shells it also appears to
come with a muzzle reference system or mrss that uses laser detection to calculate Barrel droop after sustained fire for better accuracy Russian designed tanks like the t72 and specifically the original 2 a46 Cannon developed by the Soviets have the ability to fire Cannon launch missiles such as your 9 m112 and your 9M 1119 but the use of these anywhere has been near to non-existent according to almost almost all reports North Korea lacks both the ability to produce and maintain multiple types of atgm rounds and having more than one type of missile on a single tank
would not make a ton of practical or tactical sense royu kinu is the North Korean defense industry plant that I just mispronounced it's responsible for building this I believe it's one of the main points for manufacturing tank locations in the mountainous Shing Hong South hgo Province on the surface the new tank looks like a rough combination of the American M1 Abrams and the Russian T14 Armada and you got your Chinese vt4 influences in some areas so this has led to some speculation that China or Russia provided some level of assistance in designing the tank which
would fall in line with trends of Greater cooperation between North Korea and the other two countries the electronics needed very modern tank outclass those that can realistically be produced by North Korea it could be that they're purposing non-military technology from their trade with China and other countries into tank parts or they're receiving manufacturing support from few friendly countries that they have the speed at which the tank was developed and shown to actually move around and shoot is either an indication that North Korea's manufacturing capabilities have increased or more likely that other countries specifically Russia and
China and Iran are lessening their trade restrictions however just throwing money into development won't magically make make certain Technologies appear out of thin air and it requires some form of outside assistance while no technology on the m2020 is itself groundbreaking by any means it's the fact that it was even able to be manufactured or produced by North Korea that is a sign of major significance of note for us main battle tanks especially ones with modern Optics and Fire Control Systems are incredibly complex and expensive to develop let's go out on a limb here and just
assume all of this tank technology is real actually works as advertised for argument sake let's give Kim Jong-un the benefit of the doubt how could that possibly be the case when North Korea's GDP is as low as 48 billion with a population of 25 million North Korea's GDP is about 100 times less than South Korea and their GDP per capita hovers around the same levels as Afghanistan and Haiti you can accomplish some defense goals when 26 to 33% of your GDP is spent on defense putting yearly budgets at roughly $4 billion it helps when you
invest all of your resources into one area like defense instead of your population some experts believe that currently right now in North Korea food insecurity is at its worst level than it's been at since the 199s famine US Reports estimated about 500,000 people died in North Korea during the 1990s famine On The Low End other estimates place that number in the millions hypothetically this is one way that North Korea could produce a Next Generation tank and missiles and weapons they could do it at the expense of their people the comparison to Western tanks was highlighted
with its choice of desert camo which by all accounts is useless in the Korean Peninsula but similar to a majority of modern tanks that it would be based on the latest images of the m2020 post 2023 and 2024 now show them sporting a darker Greener look which is more suited for North Korea's geography additionally with the new paint came the addition of explosive reactive armor bricks on the turret and what appears to be a t-14 like er plating on the side which was absent from that initial introduction of the tank in 2020 the turret is
a strong Breakaway from the rounded cast designs found on previous North Korean tanks being some kind of cross between an Abrams and Armada one surprising piece of technology found on the nine existing m2020 is that blew everybody's mind out of the back of their booty is in an active protection system these are a rare sight on tanks because of how cost prohibitive they can be visually these APS launchers most closely resemble the Russian Afghan system while the side AIA radar detectors for the launchers fit more within those found on the Abrams now afghanite systems are
able to intercept large caliber Sabo tank rounds traveling at like mach five according to reports seeing as APS setup are expensive and can be difficult to get right a lot of speculation was brought up as to whether or not it was legit or some kind of papier-mâché mockup however videos in the summer of 2023 were released showing the m2020 is APS hard killing an incoming RPG round of course this is still possibly North Korean Hollywood magic that can make anything happen similar to the Armada though are the location of active protection countermeasures integrated within the
turret strangely enough however it's that those launchers sit inside of cuts inside the turd itself rather than embedded within it I think this is at best a strange engineering Choice given that any break in the armor like that greatly reduces the overall strength of the armor surrounding it and create a massive weak point I would never dare to question the directions of the supreme leader though I'm sure he had his reasons the mounting around the turret would offer higher levels of protection from parallel shots but would leave the top of the turret exposed to any
kind of like top down Javelin or fpv kamakazi drones however it is much easier to intercept an RPG round than a tank round because it travels much slower and if we consider the fact that dedicated tank on tank fighting has been exceedingly rare in the 21st century it might not be the worst trade-off Tyler rway from the war zone pointed out quote the reality is while the Soviet Union developed the first APS in the late 1970s the technology behind The miniaturized Radars and other sensors as well as the interceptors found in more modern systems is
complex and may still be beyond the reach of North Korea at present this is probably our biggest indicator that while there might be a functioning tank underneath that armor the design is at least partially a facade to look impressive the road wheels side skirts flaps and rear cage Armor All add more visual similarities with the Russian T14 the slat armor is mainly there to stop your anti-tank guided missiles the actual track of the tank more closely resembles those on the western tanks being double pinned rubber tracks versus single pined metal tracks to put it simply
double pin tracks offer increased strength and reliability while your single pin tracks are a little simpler and lighter the armor is similar to what's found on the Iranian zufi car 3 and current estimates place the composite materials making it up to be on par with third generation tanks like your t80 and T90 Professor Sun Wu the head of the Department of military drones at shinhan University and former policy advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in South Korea stated he believes the Iranians may have helped North Korea developed the tank for this reason if this
Tank's capabilities are true it's a significant jump in protective abilities compared to their aging t62 spin-offs but still needs to be taken with a healthy pinch of salt in terms of engines on the m2020 we're still waiting for Kim to have the decency to open one of these up and show us the power pack but a few physical traits on the tank give us a pretty good idea of what to expect the tank has a large rear engine compartment which holds what is expected to be a upgraded version of your 12 cylinder P pungho engine
this will give the m2020 somewhere between 1,200 horsepower any information about top speed range even weight is probably completely unknown as of now except that it is powerful enough to haul around at least one chunky dictator who after riding it declared the most powerful tank in the world and that North Korea should continue to prepare for war quote unquote War preparations by North is nothing new but the development of the m2020 is only part of a larger 5-year modernization plan undergone by the dprk and most recent training exercises with the m2020 with the supreme leader
and attendance were largely done as a response to large joint training exercises between the United States and South Korea in early of March 2024 whether or not the m220 would be an effective tank is difficult to say because there's so little information available and the fact that it's only 4 years old old it's only been shown on camera four times tells us that in its current state it's likely not an operational status yet however m2020 is that are currently in service are some mixture of prototype and weapons test bed as we look at the on
paper and presumed capabilities of the m2020 it's very easy to just write it off as a piece of track propaganda with no actual worth it's important to remember that while some of North Korea is without a doubt overstating the capabilities and that this Tank's capabilities are still nowhere close to what western militaries are Fielding these these days this tank is not an impossible asset for them to create given the greater cooperation with North Korean and outside Nations that have vested interest in keeping American influence in Korea at a minimum and the raw manufacturing capabilities of
the country a relatively modern and fairly capable tank design is not out of question for the dprk it's whether or not it can produce these insignificant numbers that will determine if this tank is a threat or a propaganda peace the geopolitical world is vastly different than it was for years ago when this tank was first revealed and with it so were North Korea's priorities on the peninsula as they shift more towards a legitimate nuclear deterrence capability now in 2024 we might see a pause in future m2020 production or priorities might shift again and the next
parade has hundreds with North Korea can be anyone's guess I'm your average infan Chris Cappy thank you for watching follow me on Instagram for updates on these Live Events also check out our merch we have new t-shirt designs classic Foo bar t-shirt the modular musket got your jdam all your favorite Pentagon buzzwords like lethality are there too thank you for watching and I'll see you guys again soon
