Kim Jong Un showcases nuclear-capable MLRS ahead of party congress

North Korea’s state media has offered the usual blend of kitsch and menace: Kim Jong Un climbing into the driver’s seat of a multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) described as “nuclear-capable,” rolled out just ahead of a key party congress. France 24 reports the test involved a new “super-large” rocket launcher, while Euronews circulated footage of Kim literally taking the wheel of the launcher vehicle—because nothing says “credible command-and-control” like a personal photo-op in a weapons platform.

The message is less about a single system than about a doctrine: cheap saturation fire designed to overwhelm defenses and compress decision time. If you can’t afford conventional parity—air superiority, persistent ISR, deep magazines—then you lean into the economics of volume. Guided rockets and large-caliber MLRS sit in the sweet spot: far cheaper per round than ballistic missiles, easier to stockpile, and capable of striking airfields, ports, command posts, and civilian infrastructure with enough density to make point defenses look like a boutique service.

That is also why “nuclear-capable” matters even when nobody can verify the payload. The label turns a battlefield system into a political instrument. A launcher that can plausibly deliver a tactical nuclear warhead forces adversaries to treat any massed rocket attack as potentially escalatory from the first salvo. The ambiguity is the feature: it creates a deterrence premium without paying for an intercontinental missile fleet.

The domestic angle is equally blunt. Authoritarian regimes do not hold congresses to debate policy; they hold them to demonstrate unity. A new weapons showcase functions as a loyalty ritual, a reminder that the state’s priority is not consumer welfare or growth but the maintenance of coercive capacity. The spectacle also crowds out awkward questions about sanctions, shortages, and the opportunity cost of pouring scarce resources into munitions.

Internationally, Pyongyang is advertising a bargaining chip. Tactical nuclear talk is not just about warfighting; it is about negotiating leverage—forcing Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo to price in escalation risk and to consider “stability” deals that effectively ratify North Korea’s arsenal. Missile defense, meanwhile, becomes the perfect foil: every interceptor battery motivates the next salvo of cheaper rockets.

Kim’s “rocket launcher diplomacy” is the authoritarian answer to a world that keeps building shields. If the shield is expensive and finite, the rational counter is to manufacture arrows—lots of them—and occasionally remind everyone that some arrows might be nuclear. The rest is theater, filmed from the driver’s seat.