On February 7, the North Korean government's official news service published images of the test-firing of new homegrown anti-ship missiles from a new class of ship that the Korean People's Army (KPA) Navy has reportedly had in development for over a decade. While details are thin, the vessel is an attempt by the North Koreans to develop a high-speed "stealth" ship-killer using a surface effect hull—a combination of catamaran and hovercraft. This is the first time the ship and the missiles it fired have been shown by North Korean state media. The implied threat of the new craft and its missiles is that North Korea could strike at South Korean and US naval vessels near its territorial waters without warning.

The KPA has long had a love affair with hovercraft, though most of the KPA Navy's air-cushion ships are traditional hovercraft with large propeller fans. Surface Effect Ships (SESs) have a pair of rigid outer hulls surrounding a central air-cushion system that allows them to skim along the surface of the ocean and use more efficient marine propellers. Earlier, smaller KPA Navy SES patrol craft have reportedly reached speeds of 50 knots (90 kilometers per hour, or 57.6 miles per hour) and have incorporated some "stealth" features, such as faceted hull and superstructure designs intended to reduce their radar reflection.



However, the new SESs are bigger—as much as 40 meters (131 feet) long—and carry four of a new class of anti-ship missile derived from the Russian-made Kh-35 Uran—a sea-skimming missile with a range of over 250 kilometers (135 nautical miles) similar to the US' Harpoon missile. It's not known if the North Korean built version has that sort of range, but during tests it was said to have hit and sunk a target ship 100 kilometers away. The SES is also equipped with two North Korean AK-630 30mm Gatling gun close-in weapons systems, four machine gun turrets, and a short-range anti-aircraft missile system.

Two more of the new class of SES are under construction, though they each appear to have different gun configurations—with one appearing to have a 76mm main gun similar to the OTO Melara gun system carried on many of the world's small combatant ships.

Two other navies operate SES combat ships: the Norwegian Navy's Skjold patrol corvette, the world's fastest combat vessel, which can reach speeds of over 60 knots (111 kph); and the Russian Navy's two Bora class patrol corvettes, which are infamous for their mechanical troubles and spend most of their time pier-side in Odessa. The US tested SESs starting in the 1960s, and the US Coast Guard operated a division of SES cutters for drug interdiction operations in the 1980s but cancelled a Navy SES in 1980.