The Hyunmoo-3 is a supersonic cruise missile fielded by the South Korean military designed by Agency for Defense Development (ADD). The name Hyunmoo comes from the mythical Black Tortoise (玄武) described as the "Guardian of the Northern Sky", perhaps hinting North Korea.

Design and development

As a signatory of the multilateral Missile Technology Control Regime, South Korea agrees to refrain from importing a non-indigenous ballistic missile with a warhead larger than 500 kg, or a range of more than 300 km. Historically a bilateral agreement between the ROK and US additionally limited indigenous South Korean produced missiles in both range and warhead size. Therefore, heavy emphasis was put on developing long-range cruise missiles by the South Korean government. With the introduction of Hyunmoo-3, the Republic of Korea Army created the Missile Command in order to efficiently manage these missiles. Despite the name, the Hyunmoo-3 bears no resemblance to the previous Hyunmoo SSM, which were improved versions of Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles that were converted into short-range high-speed surface-to-surface ballistic missiles in response to North Korea's Scud-B and Nodong-1 missile threats. Instead, the new missile's designs are strikingly similar to the United States Tomahawk cruise missile. It is powered by a turbofan engine, and has a maximum payload of 500 kg of conventional explosive. The guidance systems consist of inertial guidance system and global positioning system.

Variants

Hyunmoo-3A, which was nicknamed "Eagle-1" (독수리-1) during the testing, has a range of 500 km, while Hyunmoo-3B, nicknamed "Eagle-2" (독수리-2) Cheonryong (천룡 순항 미사일), has a range of 1000 km. Hyunmoo-3C, or "Eagle-3" (독수리-3), will be capable of striking its target up to 1500 km away. This is a significant improvement from Hyunmoo I which had a range of 180 km and Hyunmoo-2A, which only has a range of 300 km, both of which were ballistic and not cruise missiles. Sejong the Great-class destroyers and KSS-III-class submarines will be equipped with these Chonryong submarine-launched cruise missiles inside their K-VLS cells. A Hyunmoo-3B air-launched cruise missile with over 500 km range exists and it is called Boramae. A submarine-launched cruise missile called the Haeseong III is designed to be launched underwater from submarines. It is actually the designation for the Hyunmoo-3 cruise missile when launched from a submarine and is unrelated to the SSM-700K Haeseong missile design.

Operators