The Nongo class is a term used by the
US Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...
to identify a series of new medium-size
warship
A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is used for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the navy branch of the armed forces of a nation, though they have also been operated by individuals, cooperatives and corporations. As well as b ...
s 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
The Korean People's Army Navy (KPANF; ) or the Korean People's Navy (KPN) is the Navy, naval component of the Korean People's Army, the North Korean armed forces.
There are some 780 vessels including 70 midget submarines (including the Yono-cla ...
.
Features and design
In late 1980s the North Korean shipbuilding industry experimented with a large warship with an innovative
catamaran
A catamaran () (informally, a "cat") is a watercraft with two parallel hull (watercraft), hulls of equal size. The wide distance between a catamaran's hulls imparts stability through resistance to rolling and overturning; no ballast is requi ...
-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
Weapons 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 and a turret of guns.
The
missile boat
A missile boat or missile cutter is a small, fast warship armed with anti-ship missiles. Being smaller than other warships such as destroyers and frigates, missile boats are popular with nations interested in forming a navy at lower cost. They ...
variants at first were valued with one gun of , one or two turrets of 30 mm and unknown kind of
anti-ship missile
An anti-ship missile (AShM or ASM) is a guided missile that is designed for use against ships and large boats. Most anti-ship missiles are of the sea-skimming variety, and many use a combination of inertial guidance and active radar homing. ...
s.
Later, it surfaced after North Korean propaganda video that the missile boats are indeed armed with the relatively effective Russian
Kh-35
The Zvezda Kh-35 (, NATO reporting name AS-20 'Kayak') is a Soviet turbojet subsonic cruise anti-ship missile. The missile can be launched from helicopters, surface ships and coastal defence batteries with the help of a rocket booster, in whic ...
missiles. Also the gun appears to be different, a reversed-engined turret of (related probably to the Iranian Fajr-27, a reversed-engine gun of the famous Italian
OTO Melara 76 mm
The OTO Melara 76 mm gun, marketed as the OTO 76/62 Gun Mount, is a naval autocannon built and designed by the Italian Defense contractor, defence company OTO Melara. It is based on the OTO Melara 76/62C and evolved toward 76/62 SR and 76/ ...
).
Despite being probably less advanced than their South Korean rivals, the Nongo-class missile boats could on paper face the South Korean 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.
Subclasses
At least 3 subclasses are known:
* Original stealth SES
* "A" type missile boats (not-stealth, size reduced)
* "B" type missile boats (not-stealth, size reduced)
References
{{Reflist
Missile boats of the Korean People's Navy