North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has publicly elevated the country’s super-large multiple rocket launcher force to a strategic tier, calling for a fundamental transformation of North Korea’s artillery capabilities. 

According to state media KCNA, Kim on December 28, 2025 inspected a major munitions factory producing super-large caliber rocket systems and praised them as a “super-powerful weapon” capable of delivering sudden, precise, and devastating strikes.

Kim described the system as a potential “strategic attack means” that could “annihilate the enemy,” language that places the weapon beyond traditional battlefield artillery. He urged what he called a “revolution in upgrading the artillery weapon system,” emphasizing the need for expanded mass production to ensure the weapon becomes the backbone of North Korea’s modernized long-range artillery forces.

The system inspected is widely identified by external analysts as the KN-25, a 600mm caliber weapon first tested in 2019. 

Although North Korea officially categorizes it as a multiple launch rocket system (MLRS), Western militaries frequently classify it as a short-range ballistic missile due to its range and flight profile.

The KN-25 is assessed to have a strike range of approximately 380–400 kilometers, allowing coverage of targets across much of South Korea, including the Seoul metropolitan area and potential U.S. military facilities. 

It is believed to use precision guidance based on inertial navigation, possibly supplemented by satellite inputs, with reported accuracy measured in tens of meters. The launcher is typically mounted on tracked or wheeled transporter-erector-launchers carrying four to six tubes, enhancing survivability through rapid relocation.

While the system is conventionally armed, North Korea has previously claimed the KN-25 could carry tactical nuclear warheads, further blurring the distinction between artillery and missile forces.

Images released by state media showed Kim touring the production facility with rows of launcher vehicles visible, underscoring the industrial scale of the program. Kim’s focus on serial production suggests the KN-25 is moving from a niche capability toward a mass-deployed system integrated into North Korea’s standing force structure.

By emphasizing both precision and volume, Pyongyang appears to be pursuing a doctrine that combines saturation fire with accurate, long-range strikes. This approach complicates missile defense planning by presenting a large number of high-speed, quasi-ballistic threats that sit below the traditional strategic missile threshold but exceed conventional artillery norms.

The factory inspection forms part of a broader sequence of military-related activities by Kim, including visits to nuclear submarine construction sites and oversight of missile testing programs. These appearances come ahead of a key Workers’ Party of Korea congress expected in early 2026, where defense modernization is likely to feature prominently.

Taken together, the messaging highlights North Korea’s intent to anchor its deterrence posture not only in intercontinental systems but also in highly mobile, precision-capable artillery forces designed for rapid escalation in a regional conflict.

Japan is on track to register its lowest number of births since records began in 1899, underscoring how sharply demographic reality has diverged from official planning assumptions. 

Based on preliminary data from the first 10 months of 2025, demographers expect total births to fall below 670,000, a level the government had not projected until 2041. 

This would place the milestone 16 years earlier than forecast, eroding the credibility of medium- and low-variant population scenarios used in fiscal and economic planning.

The estimates contrast starkly with projections last updated in 2023 by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, which anticipated 749,000 births in 2025 under its central scenario. 

Even the most pessimistic “low variant” forecast had assumed around 681,000 births this year. A sub-670,000 outcome would therefore breach all official planning bands simultaneously.

The scale of the decline presents a direct challenge for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who in late November 2025 convened the first meeting of the Population Strategy Headquarters, a task force she labeled essential to addressing Japan’s “biggest problem.” 

The government allocated roughly $23 billion in 2024 for a three-year program aimed at boosting births and marriage rates.

Yet structural indicators continue to move in the opposite direction. 

Annual marriages, a key variable in a society where births outside marriage remain rare, have fallen below 500,000, about half the 1972 peak. 

At the same time, annual deaths continue to rise. Japan’s population shrank by just over 900,000 people in 2024, compounding pressure on pension systems, taxation, and labor supply.

Masakazu Yamauchi of Waseda University estimates that 2025 births will represent a 3 percent decline from 686,000 recorded in 2024, marking the 10th consecutive year of record-low births. 

The expected figures exclude children born to foreign residents, further highlighting the contraction of Japan’s native population at a time when resistance to immigration is rising.

Economists and opposition politicians have urged authorities to revise their assumptions. 

But doing so would carry political and fiscal consequences. 

“Years of government efforts to raise the birth rate have proven futile,” said Masatoshi Kikuchi of Mizuho Securities, warning that acknowledging the trend would make “higher taxes and lower pension benefits inevitable.”

Some demographers have also examined whether 2026, a hinouma or “fire horse” year in the Japanese astrological calendar, could further distort birth trends. 

In 1966, the last such year, births fell by 25 percent before rebounding in 1967. However, Takashi Inoue of Aoyama Gakuin University dismissed its relevance today, noting that younger generations regard it as historical trivia. 

“I don’t think it will have much of an impact on their marriage or childbirth behaviour,” he said.

The data suggest that Japan’s demographic trajectory is no longer fluctuating around forecasts but settling consistently below them, forcing policymakers to confront limits on social engineering in the face of entrenched economic and social change.

China is moving steadily toward a nuclear force exceeding 1,000 warheads by the end of the decade, a development the Pentagon says marks one of the most consequential shifts in global strategic stability in decades.

In its 2025 annual report to Congress, the U.S. Department of Defense assesses that Beijing’s nuclear buildup, while temporarily slowing in pace, remains firmly on track.

“The PLA remains on track to have over 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.”

The report notes that China’s stockpile remained in the low 600s through 2024, but emphasizes that the overall trajectory is unchanged.

This expansion represents a dramatic increase from estimates in 2020, when the Pentagon assessed China possessed roughly 200 warheads.

The buildup is accompanied by advances in delivery systems, early-warning capabilities, and command-and-control structures, indicating a transition from a minimal deterrent posture toward a far more flexible and survivable nuclear force.

The Pentagon highlights China’s progress toward an early-warning counterstrike capability, a posture closer to launch-on-warning doctrines long associated with U.S. and Russian nuclear forces.

According to the report, China is investing heavily in space-based infrared sensors and other detection systems designed to shorten decision timelines in a crisis.

“China probably made progress on its attempts to achieve an early warning counterstrike capability.”

This shift, the report suggests, increases both China’s confidence in its deterrent and the risks of miscalculation during periods of heightened tension.

The Pentagon also points to China’s September 2024 launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean—the first such test since 1980—as evidence of growing confidence in full-range nuclear strike capabilities.

The nuclear expansion is not occurring in isolation.

The Pentagon situates China’s strategic forces within a broader transformation of how Beijing conceptualizes war itself.

The report states that China increasingly views future conflict as a struggle between entire national systems rather than discrete military engagements.

“China’s top military strategy focuses squarely on overcoming the United States through a whole-of-nation mobilization effort that Beijing terms ‘national total war.’”

Under this concept, nuclear forces serve not only as a deterrent but as a central pillar of escalation control, designed to shape adversary decision-making across the full spectrum of conflict.

The report indicates that China’s leadership sees nuclear weapons, cyber operations, space capabilities, and conventional long-range strikes as integrated tools rather than separate domains.

The Pentagon describes “national total war” as a framework that extends beyond the battlefield, encompassing economic resilience, industrial mobilization, information control, and civilian-military integration.

Drawing lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine, Chinese military writings emphasize the need to sustain conflict over time while managing domestic stability and international pressure.

“The PLA views conflict not simply as a clash of militaries, but as a clash of national systems.”

In this context, China’s nuclear buildup provides strategic depth, allowing Beijing to deter external intervention while prosecuting a prolonged campaign.

The report suggests that China believes a credible and survivable nuclear force reduces the likelihood that the United States or its allies would escalate a regional conflict—such as over Taiwan—into a wider war.

The Pentagon warns that China’s combined nuclear expansion and whole-of-nation war planning pose a growing challenge to U.S. deterrence strategies.

Rather than preparing solely for short, sharp conflicts, Beijing appears to be positioning itself for sustained competition and potential conflict against a technologically advanced adversary.

The report frames China’s trajectory as a deliberate effort to reshape the strategic environment, reduce U.S. freedom of action, and alter escalation dynamics in China’s favor.

While the Pentagon stops short of predicting imminent conflict, it underscores that the scale and integration of China’s nuclear and conventional modernization efforts are fundamentally changing the risk landscape in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.