Croatia Orders 18 K239 Chunmoo Launchers From Hanwha

Military Sentinel, Zagreb – Croatia signed a contract on September 10, 2026, with South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace for 18 K239 Chunmoo multiple rocket launch systems, a deal that gives the Croatian Army a second modern rocket artillery fleet alongside its existing M142 HIMARS order and pushes its maximum strike reach out to roughly 300 kilometers.

The Deal

Croatia’s Ministry of Defense put the total package excluding VAT at €435.2 million (€544.05 million including VAT). Hanwha Aerospace, for its part, values its own portion of the contract at €411.8 million, since the Croatian total also covers elements delivered outside Hanwha’s scope, including a separately contracted deal with Poland’s WB Electronics to supply and integrate the Topaz command-and-control system. The two topline figures come from the same source article without a line-item reconciliation, so readers should treat the €411.8M/€435.2M split as reported rather than independently audited; this needs verification against the original contract documents or a Croatian MoD statement.

The package covers launchers, guided munitions, ammunition resupply trucks, fire direction vehicles, simulators, missile test equipment, training, and initial spares not simply 18 vehicles. Deliveries run from 2026 through 2029 on the Croatian side (with 85% of the package concentrated in 2028) and through 2030 on Hanwha’s own schedule.

Why It Matters

The Chunmoo buy makes Croatia Europe’s fourth Chunmoo operator, following Poland, Norway, and Estonia, and lifts the continental Chunmoo total from 315 to 333 launchers Poland alone accounts for roughly 87% of that fleet with its Homar-K program. Zagreb now runs a mixed rocket artillery force: eight M142 HIMARS already on order plus 18 K239L launchers, replacing a legacy top range of about 20 km (M92 Vulkan) with munitions reaching out to 290 km via the CTM-290 tactical ballistic missile.

The K239’s dual independent pod design is the operational distinction from the single-pod HIMARS: each launcher can carry 12 CGR-080 guided rockets, eight CTM-MR missiles, two CTM-290s, or mixed loadouts. Across 18 launchers that is a theoretical maximum of 216 ready CGR-080 rockets, versus 48 across Croatia’s eight HIMARS a notable increase in ready ordnance per fleet, though on what this means operationally, since Croatia has not disclosed actual missile purchase quantities, only launcher and pod capacity.

At roughly 31 tonnes, the K239L is substantially heavier than the HIMARS and marginally slower on road speed and range (80 km/h / ~450 km versus 94 km/h / ~480 km), a trade-off for its heavier dual-pod payload.

Strategic Context

Croatia’s decision to run HIMARS and Chunmoo in parallel mirrors Estonia’s approach and reflects a broader European pattern of diversifying rocket artillery suppliers rather than depending on a single U.S. or Korean source. The shared Topaz C2 architecture also used by Poland’s Homar-K creates a fire-control commonality between fleets that could matter for interoperability in a NATO context, even though Croatia’s Chunmoo retains the original Korean K239 vehicle rather than Poland’s Jelcz 8×8 truck-based variant.

Croatia’s entry also lands just ahead of Hanwha’s planned 2027 launch of a formal Chunmoo User Club in South Korea, following the first Chunmoo User Workshop held in Tartu, Estonia, on September 3, 2026.