North Korea Isn't Just Firing More Missiles This Year, It's Firing More Kinds of Them
A surge in North Korean launches across ballistic, hypersonic, cruise and submarine platforms is forcing South Korean planners to defend against attacks that could arrive from several directions and altitudes at once.
North Korea's missile program has spent 2026 expanding sideways as much as forward, adding new platforms and launch methods to an arsenal that already worried South Korean defense planners, and that spread is proving harder to counter than a simple rise in the number of tests.
A fuller test calendar across more systems
The raw volume alone marks a jump. North Korea has carried out 16 ballistic missile launches through October 12 this year, compared with just 6 in all of 2025 and 12 in 2024, alongside seven cruise missile tests through October 14. But the more telling shift is in variety rather than count. Pyongyang has tested multiple Hwasong-11 short-range ballistic variants, launched KN-25 super-large multiple rocket systems, fired hypersonic missiles on three separate occasions in January, September and October, and tested both strategic and tactical cruise missiles, some reportedly fitted with AI-assisted guidance.
The platforms firing those weapons have diversified too. Tests have now been launched from destroyers, including the Choe Hyon and Kang Kon, and North Korea claimed an October 14 test of an underwater-launched cruise missile, a submarine-based capability that would add yet another axis an adversary has to track.
Numbers that don't always add up
Not every claim has held up to outside scrutiny. One Hwasong-11 Da-2.5 variant is assessed to carry a 2.5-metric-ton warhead and was fired nearly 1,000 kilometers, while a Hwasong-11 Ra tested on April 19 was claimed by the North to have struck a target area of roughly 12.5 to 13 hectares, a precision claim that remains unverified. An October 3 missile illustrates the gap between North Korean claims and outside assessments especially clearly: Pyongyang put its range at roughly 1,000 kilometers, South Korea's assessment came in above 700 kilometers, and Japan's estimate landed around 680 kilometers.
Why variety is the harder problem
For South Korean defense planners, the diversification matters more than any single test result. Shin Jong-woo of the Korea Defense and Security Forum warned that combined attacks involving missiles, rockets and drones launched together could overwhelm the South's air defenses, a scenario built specifically around forcing a single system to track threats arriving from different altitudes, speeds and directions at once rather than a uniform wave of similar weapons. Other analysts tracking the program, including Yang Uk of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification and Kwak Jin-o of Pai Chai University, have pointed to the same underlying pattern: North Korea appears to be building optionality into its arsenal as much as raw striking power.
Seoul's answer so far
South Korea's response has leaned on its own technological catch-up, including a test of its first domestically developed hypersonic glide vehicle on October 8. Experts tracking the exchange argue that matching individual weapons system for system will not be enough on its own, calling instead for better low-altitude surveillance and layered, multi-tier defenses capable of handling simultaneous threats from several directions rather than one adversary missile at a time.
