Croatia set to buy South Korean Chunmoo rocket launchers

Croatia’s government is set to approve the purchase of 18 South Korean K239 Chunmoo multiple rocket launchers for €435.2 million ($506 million), excluding tax, at a cabinet session Friday, Croatian newspaper Jutarnji List reported.

The deal would be Croatia’s largest weapons purchase since its 1990s war for independence, apart from its earlier order of Rafale fighter jets, according to the newspaper. The rockets involved would give Croatia’s military a strike range between 30 and 300-plus kilometers (19 and 186-plus miles), including ballistic rockets that exceed 300 km, intended to serve as a long-range deterrent. Jutarnji List reported that the number of rockets included in the contract has not been disclosed.

About 85% of the system is expected to arrive by 2028, an unusually fast delivery timeline for a major weapons contract. Once the government approves the purchase, Croatian Defense Minister Ivan Anušić is expected to sign the deal with South Korean manufacturer Hanwha Aerospace, along with a separate contract with Polish company WB Group to install a command-and-control system in the launcher vehicles. Payments would run from 2026 through 2029, according to the report.

The Chunmoo system, whose name translates roughly to “heavenly weapon,” would replace Croatia’s existing Soviet-designed Vulkan M92 and 122mm Grad BM-21 launchers. Those systems average more than 30 years old and reach only about 20 km, well short of what Croatian officials say the modern battlefield requires, the newspaper reported.

Croatian and South Korean defense officials began discussing the purchase roughly a year ago during a visit by Anušić to Seoul, according to Jutarnji List. Croatia had earlier signed an agreement with the United States at the end of 2024 for eight HIMARS launchers and 394 rockets with an 80 km range. But the U.S. has since paused exports of 300 km-range rockets to allies to meet its own military’s needs, and it bars foreign sales of the longer 500 km-range variant entirely, pushing Croatia toward South Korea for its extended-range strike capability.

Croatia would follow Poland, Norway and Estonia in ordering the Chunmoo system. Poland’s order covers 288 launchers and 23,000 rockets, along with a rocket factory to be built on Polish territory. Norway ordered 16 launchers and Estonia nine. Both Poland and Estonia also operate HIMARS but turned to Chunmoo for its longer-range rockets.

Hanwha built the Chunmoo to fire multiple rocket types from a single launcher at once, using two separate rocket pods that can each be loaded with a different caliber, without requiring any modification to the launcher itself. A crew can fire, for example, four 280mm rockets from one pod and six guided 239mm rockets from the other, depending on the mission. Loaded with Hanwha’s most powerful ballistic rocket, the 600mm CTM-290 with its 300-plus km range, each pod carries a single rocket. Firing time varies by caliber: the system can launch 12 guided 239mm rockets in under a minute, or around 40 smaller 131mm rockets in several dozen seconds. Three soldiers operate each launcher.

Compared with HIMARS, which fires up to six rockets from a single pod, the twin-pod Chunmoo carries roughly double the rockets per launcher, according to the report. The contract includes logistics support and six weeks of crew training. Operating all 18 launchers would require about 100 soldiers, the same number needed to crew Croatia’s HIMARS systems, Jutarnji List reported. Where the launchers will be based within the Croatian Army has not been disclosed.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and President Zoran Milanović have both backed the purchase. Milanović alluded to the coming deal two months ago in Ankara following a NATO summit, saying Croatia needed to respond to neighboring Serbia’s acquisition of Israel’s PULS rocket system and its interest in long-range weapons, including China’s CM-400AKG supersonic missile. It remains unclear whether Serbia has obtained 300 km-range rockets for its PULS launchers.

After the rocket system purchase, Croatia still has two other major, and expensive, defense acquisitions pending: a medium-range air defense system estimated at €500 to 600 million ($581 to $697 million), and two corvettes expected to cost roughly €1 billion ($1.16 billion) combined. Jutarnji List reported that officials expect both deals to be finalized within the next year.