North Korea says it has tested a new torpedo system that uses artificial intelligence for target detection and guidance, adding an AI weapon to a naval arsenal that has been expanding at a startling pace. State media announced on Saturday that the underwater test of the "super-speed" precision-guided torpedo, named the Zam-2.0, took place on 15 October — the latest in a five-year programme Pyongyang says involved more than 180 separate trials.
The Korean Central News Agency reported that the Academy of Defense Sciences, the Missile Administration and the Underwater Weapons Research Bureau jointly carried out the launch to verify what it called the successful technical updating of the weapon. Senior officials who observed the test described it as a major achievement signalling a significant change in the substantive development of the North's navy. As with all of Pyongyang's weapons claims, the capabilities described have not been independently verified.
What Pyongyang claims the weapon can do
According to KCNA, artificial intelligence technology was applied to the torpedo's target detection and guidance functions — though the agency offered no explanation of what "AI" means in this context, and analysts stress the term could cover anything from basic signal processing to genuine autonomous targeting. The test reportedly validated core technology for improved propulsion efficiency, developed through those 180-plus trials, along with the performance of a rocket propulsion unit.
The reference to a rocket propulsion unit and "high-speed" travel has raised the possibility that the Zam-2.0 is a supercavitating torpedo — a weapon that forms a layer of gas at its nose to reduce water resistance, travelling far faster than conventional torpedoes. Combining that speed with guidance technology able to detect and strike underwater targets precisely is considered extremely difficult; other countries pursuing such weapons are assessed to have hit technical limits in getting them to work operationally.
Why analysts are sceptical
The scepticism starts with the source. South Korea's military, which routinely accuses the North of exaggerating its weapons capabilities, has not commented on the KCNA report — and no independent sensor data, imagery or third-party confirmation of the test has surfaced. Pyongyang's five-year, 180-trial narrative is impossible to verify from outside, and the agency's silence on what the AI component actually does leaves the headline claim essentially untestable.
Still, analysts say the direction of travel is worth taking seriously even if this specific claim is inflated. "South Korea and the United States deploy decoy targets to divert torpedoes, but AI could potentially help distinguish real targets from decoys," Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University, told AFP. Torpedoes that can search, correct their own course and make evasive manoeuvres would be harder to decoy and harder to track than older straight-running weapons — whether the Zam-2.0 is that weapon remains unproven.
A peninsula arms race in fast motion
The torpedo test lands in the middle of an accelerating tit-for-tat on the Korean peninsula. On 8 October, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung oversaw the country's first test firing of a domestically built hypersonic glide vehicle, a weapon designed to change course in flight and evade missile defences. Days earlier, Kim Jong Un had overseen a test of the North's own intermediate-range hypersonic missile — a system Pyongyang claimed could alter its flight path at low altitude, leaving "no way to avoid" it.
Then on 14 October, North Korea test-fired two types of submarine-launched strategic cruise missiles in the East Sea, and on Friday the two sides were openly arguing about the South's glide-vehicle test — Pyongyang rejected Seoul's account of its performance and used it to justify its own build-up. Neither side shows any sign of slowing down.
Earlier this month the North also announced the AI-assisted launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, which KCNA said used artificial intelligence in its mid-course and terminal phases to correct its flight. Analysts say Pyongyang could be advancing its weapons technology rapidly with support from Russia, received in exchange for sending troops to support Moscow's war against Ukraine. Separately, a US Justice Department case this week highlighted North Korean IT workers infiltrating American companies — a reminder that the regime's technology ambitions span well beyond the parade ground.
