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Subject to severe sanctions for almost a decade, the proliferation of North Korean conventional armament on the international arms market is an often underreported topic, and many arms deals of the past are completely undocumented..
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Alongside main battle tanks upgraded by the DPRK, various types of artillery, anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) and light machine guns (LMGs) already present in today’s conflict hotspots, analysis of imagery of weaponry used in the Syrian Civil War shows the presence of North Korean man-portable air-defence systems (MANPADS) amongst various factions opposing the regime of president Bashar al-Assad. The sighting of this system has become common enough to suggest the scale of their initial delivery to the Assad regime was sizeable
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A single example was first identified in August 2014 in the hands of a fighter of the Islamic State at Ksesh (which was captured from Jaish al-Islam in the summer of 2014), but further research has unveiled an entire batch of at least 18 launchers and their associated systems was captured by the Free Syrian Army and Kateeba al-Kawthar (originally an al-Qaeda-linked group) at Brigade 80 in Aleppo in February 2013.
North Korean HT-16PGJ MANPADS in Lattakia, 26th of November 2015. Right: The same MANPADS seen in a North Korean military parade.
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Further imagery analysis reveals that the North Korean system spotted in Syria carries the designator HT-16PGJ (the missiles alone HG-16), and that the specific examples captured at Brigade 80 were part of a contract dated the 1st of January 2004, meaning it is unlikely the shelf-life of the thermal batteries has yet run out. It is possible reports based on Western intelligence of a 2003 delivery by an unknown supplier (said to be Belarus) concerning some 300 Igla MANPADS actually refer to a deal surrounding the North Korean system, especially since the Igla has not yet been seen in Syria.
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Despite the fact that the Syrian War has seen its fair share of MANPADS variants, ranging from Soviet-legacy Strela-2M, Strela-3s and Igla-1s to Chinese FN-6s supplied by Qatar through Sudan and Russian Igla-S’ provided a few years before the start of the conflict, anti-air defence from the multitude of factions currently roaming the Syrian skies remains scarce.