In April of 2021, I published a small write up on an interesting ship that appeared at the Mayang-do Naval Base that looked to be a Mobile Ship Target (MST) for North Korea’s cruise missile program. And after TWO WHOLE YEARS of waiting, it appears to be taking shape for use as an at-sea target platform. An image from Maxar, taken on April 20th, showed the addition of what appears to be a radar reflective array previously seen on the MST North Korea used in 2017, and while not an imminent sign of a cruise missile test, it’s very rare to catch missile test preparation in the wild using commercially available sources, so this is a small update to my original article.
The Radar Reflectors appear to have been added sometime between March 13th and April 20th of this year according to Maxar’s satellite image catalog of the site. Using a combination of images from Maxar, Planet Labs, and Google Earth, the MST has remained relatively unaltered since relocating the Mayang-do in 2020, with the exception of being periodically moved to facilitate additional ship mooring.
While this would indicate that they are moving forward with using this ship as a mobile target for its missile program, it is hard to apply a specific test date, as this signature is still relatively new for North Korea. Updates to this ships modifications will be added to this article as new images emerge.
