- South Korea's Hanwha Aerospace publicly unveiled the KAAV-II amphibious infantry fighting vehicle prototype, featuring an unmanned 40mm CTA autocannon turret.
- South Korea's Defense Acquisition Program Administration allocated approximately $1.78 billion to the KAAV-II program, with mass production planned from 2029 and full fielding by 2036.
South Korea pulled back the curtain on its next-generation amphibious fighting vehicle, publicly revealing the KAAV-II prototype for the first time and giving defense watchers their clearest look yet at what the Republic of Korea Marine Corps intends to take into amphibious assaults in the decades ahead.
The vehicle, developed by Hanwha Aerospace, one of South Korea’s largest defense manufacturers, features an unmanned turret armed with a 40mm CTA autocannon, a caliber that outguns anything currently in Seoul’s amphibious fleet by a significant margin and opens up entirely new engagement options against armored vehicles, drones, and fortified positions that the aging KAAV-7A1 generation simply cannot address.
The KAAV-II is built to replace the Republic of Korea Marine Corps’ existing fleet of roughly 170 KAAV-7A1 vehicles, which are South Korean-built versions of the American AAV-7, a design with roots in the 1970s that was engineered to get troops from ship to beach rather than to fight through a modern contested shoreline. South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration has allocated approximately $1.78 billion toward the program, with operational fielding planned to be completed by 2036. The old KAAV was fast enough for its era and reliable enough to stay in service for decades, but it was lightly armed and increasingly outmatched by the kind of threats a landing force now encounters before it even reaches the beach, let alone pushes inland.
The 40mm CTA autocannon mounted in the KAAV-II’s unmanned turret is a weapon type that has been reshaping European armored vehicle programs for years. CTA stands for Cased Telescoped Ammunition, a design in which the projectile sits entirely inside the cartridge case rather than protruding from the top, making rounds significantly more compact and allowing more ammunition to be stored in a given space. The 40mm CTAS achieves an operational range of more than 4 kilometers while delivering armor penetration that its manufacturer, CTA International, describes as unmatched for a medium-caliber weapon, with the terminal effect of its high-explosive round four times greater than a conventional 30mm round. The system fires at up to 200 rounds per minute and its ammunition range covers armor-piercing, high-explosive, airburst, and anti-drone rounds, giving a single vehicle the ability to engage infantry, light armor, fortifications, helicopters, and drones without changing weapon systems. The cannon’s barrel can elevate to 85 degrees, enabling effective engagement of aerial targets in a dedicated air defense mode, a capability that has taken on new urgency as drone threats have proliferated across every modern battlefield.
Military expert Mason Yeonhaku, who has tracked the KAAV-II program through South Korea’s major defense exhibitions for years without ever seeing the actual vehicle on display, noted that the KAAV-II incorporates technologies also planned for the K-NIFV, South Korea’s forthcoming Korean New Infantry Fighting Vehicle program, meaning Hanwha and the Agency for Defense Development have been building a shared technology base that will eventually flow across the entire South Korean armored vehicle fleet rather than treating each program as an isolated effort.
The KAAV-II program has a long and occasionally difficult development history, beginning in 2015 and working through exploratory and system development phases that were not always smooth. System development runs from 2023 through 2028 with mass production expected from 2029, according to GlobalSecurity.org’s program tracking. A 2023 sinking accident during water mobility testing, in which two Hanwha employees died after a prototype submerged during trials at Pohang on South Korea’s southeastern coast, cast a shadow over the program and raised serious questions about readiness timelines and testing procedures. The accident prompted an investigation by defense authorities, led to delays in some test phases, and drew sharp criticism from South Korean media about whether safety protocols had been adequate before sending a vehicle into deep water. The public unveiling on May 18, after years of prototypes being transported under wraps to avoid photography at every major Korean defense show, signals that Seoul considers the program to have cleared that difficult period and entered a phase mature enough to show the world.
The water performance of the KAAV-II represents one of its most significant engineering challenges and one of its clearest competitive advantages over the vehicle it replaces. Projected water speeds of approximately 20 kilometers per hour or higher are expected through upgraded propulsion systems, roughly doubling the 13.2 kilometers per hour that the current KAAV manages in the water, which compresses the most dangerous phase of any amphibious assault, namely the exposed transit from ship to shore, into a significantly shorter window. Like the U.S. Marine Corps’ cancelled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the KAAV-II uses a deployable bow flap that helps the vehicle plane through the water, along with two large-diameter water jets for propulsion, plus deployable side flaps that cover the underside of the tracks and a rear flap to provide a smoother hull surface for water travel. The Americans cancelled their EFV after years of engine problems and cost overruns; Seoul is now attempting to succeed where that program failed.
According to technical specifications cited in South Korean defense sources, the KAAV-II runs an 850-horsepower engine on land, with output rising to 2,700 horsepower when a seawater cooling system activates in water mode, a dramatic power surge specifically engineered to achieve the high-speed water transit the program has been targeting since its inception. The vehicle also incorporates advanced command-and-control systems and modern sensor suites, with the unmanned turret configuration reducing crew exposure by removing the gunner from the line of fire entirely and allowing a smaller crewed section to operate from inside the protected hull.
The Republic of Korea Marine Corps currently operates approximately 164 KAAV vehicles, and once development and testing requirements are completed, the KAAV-II is expected to proceed to mass production and gradually enter operational service alongside existing K-21 Infantry Fighting Vehicles and current-generation KAAV platforms. The K-21, also built by Hanwha, has been South Korea’s primary land-based infantry fighting vehicle since 2009, and having the KAAV-II join the same family with shared technologies and compatible digital systems gives the Marine Corps a coherent force structure rather than a patchwork of incompatible platforms from different eras and different manufacturers.