North Korea's NEW Tank is a Nightmare

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The M2020 was first unveiled in October of 2020, during a military parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of the North Korean Communist Workers’ Party. A total of nine drove down the main avenue during the parade, sporting what looked like modern optics, armor plating, and even active protection systems. The prototype tanks were shown off along with their new rocket systems, and a mobile gun system that’s definitely not a stryker at all.

By all accounts, the M2020 is still in its prototyping and testing phase, and each time this tank has popped up, it’s been a bit more developed. But based on current information and looking at the rest of the DPRK’s tank fleet, we have a good idea of where the tank is at in production, and what its rough capabilities are.

One of the first things you’ll 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 used a derivative of Russian T-62 tank designs. Trade embargos on the country, especially in the realm of military equipment have largely prevented North Korea from obtaining modern tank technology. The tanks we do see are generally frankensteined designs incorporating a base model T-62 design, with various overlapping additions from other tanks like T-72s and Type 88s as they’ve managed to get pieces of them.

Currently North Korea fields three designs, the Chonma-ho, the Pokpung-ho, and Songun-915, the latter of which was equipped with a standard 125mm smoothbore cannon.

Typically with each newer iteration of North Korean tank, a few incremental upgrades are all that are done with each, but the M2020 quickly broke this trend.

On the surface the new tank looks like a rough combination of an M1 Abrams, the T-14 Armata, and Chinese VT-4 in some areas. 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. This 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 it would be based on. The latest images of the M2020 post 2023 and into 2024 now show them sporting a darker greener look, which is more suited to 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 T-14-like ERA plating on the side, which was absent in the initial introduction in 2020.

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