Breaking News: Estonia Orders Six K239 Chunmoo Rocket Launchers in €290M Deal.

Estonia has signed a nearly €290 million contract with Hanwha Aerospace to acquire six K239 Chunmoo multiple rocket launchers, including missiles, training, and long-term support. The move sharply expands Estonia’s deep strike options against high-value targets and strengthens NATO deterrence on the alliance’s northeastern flank.

According to information released by the Estonian Centre for Defence Investments on December 21, 2025, Estonia has finalized a contract worth nearly €290 million with Hanwha Aerospace for the procurement of six K239 Chunmoo multiple rocket launch systems. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027 and include three families of rockets and missiles, crew training, in-service support, and vehicle modifications tailored to Estonian operating conditions and national road regulations. A framework agreement included in the deal leaves room for follow-on purchases.
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K239 Chunmoo is a mobile 8x8 twin pod rocket launcher firing guided rockets and long-range missiles for precision strikes from about 80 to 290 km, optimized for rapid shoot and scoot operations (Picture source: Hanwha Aerospace).

Chunmoo is built around a twin pod launcher on a high mobility 8×8 truck. Each pod is a sealed containerized pack, enabling rapid reloading and simpler ammunition handling under field conditions. Estonia’s contract explicitly names the 239 mm CGR-080 guided rocket, the CTM-MR, and the long-range CTM-290, giving Tallinn a ladder of effects from precision strikes around brigade depth to theater-relevant interdiction. ECDI’s Estonian language release describes CGR 080 as reaching up to 80 km and CTM-290 as extending to 290 km, while Korean reporting has consistently associated CTM MR with a mid-range bracket around 160 km, filling the gap between guided rockets and ballistic class missiles.

Chunmoo is designed for the modern counterbattery fight where survival depends on mobility, dispersion, and time on the firing point. A wheeled 8×8 launcher can road march quickly across Estonia’s compact battlespace, shoot, displace, and rearm from pre-positioned pods, an approach that suits NATO’s sensor-to-shooter doctrine where drones, ground radars, and allied ISR cue fires in minutes rather than hours. The tactical sweet spot is the ability to saturate a target set with a fast salvo using rockets, then pivot to fewer, higher-value shots with long-range missiles against command posts, logistics nodes, air defense radars, and artillery groupings.

Estonia’s rationale is rooted in geography and threat math. With a direct border with Russia and a short warning timeline in any crisis, Tallinn has been pushing hard to build deep strike capacity that can hold an adversary’s rear areas at risk, not just the forward edge. Estonian officials have framed rocket artillery as a deterrence tool for Estonia and NATO, and local media have linked the push to a broader investment surge, including plans to spend more than €10 billion from 2026 to 2029 on capabilities such as deep strike, air defense, and ammunition.

Chunmoo also answers two practical problems that Western competitors often cannot solve simultaneously: capacity and availability. HIMARS remains the alliance benchmark for precision rocket artillery, and Estonia is already building that fleet, but global demand and production bottlenecks have stretched delivery timelines across Europe. Estonia’s Ministry of Defence has been explicit that Chunmoo is meant to supplement HIMARS, not substitute it, while pulling meaningful industrial value into Estonia through localization. ECDI states Hanwha will invest one-fifth of the procurement value into Estonian industry, a rare feature in rocket artillery programs where the ammunition supply chain is typically the tightest choke point.

In a straight comparison, HIMARS is lighter and deeply standardized across NATO, and it benefits from a broad U.S. munitions ecosystem, including GMLRS and the extended range GMLRS that Lockheed Martin says reaches 150 km, and future PrSM class missiles. Chunmoo, by contrast, brings a two-pod architecture on a wheeled chassis, giving it a natural advantage in magazine depth per launcher and the ability to tailor loads by mixing different pod types, an attribute valued by Poland in its Homar K variant. Against Israel’s PULS, which European buyers are selecting for its multi-caliber flexibility and up to 300 km class precision options, Chunmoo competes most strongly on the combination of rocket and ballistic missile effects packaged on one launcher family and on Hanwha’s demonstrated willingness to localize support and production. The newest Western challenger, Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin’s GMARS, is also a wheeled two-pod concept and advertises 400 km class growth, but it is still entering the market while Chunmoo is already being fielded at scale by major European customers.

What Chunmoo will replace inside the Estonian force structure is not an older rocket launcher fleet, but a capability gap. Before HIMARS and now Chunmoo, Estonia’s deep fires relied primarily on 155 mm tube artillery, including K9 Thunder howitzers also sourced from South Korea, which are optimized for sustained fire support rather than long-range operational interdiction. Chunmoo effectively shifts part of the mission set, striking beyond tube artillery reach and reducing dependence on allied rocket artillery for the opening hours of a high-intensity fight.

Finally, Estonia’s decision underlines the accelerating footprint of South Korea’s defense industry in Europe. Hanwha is not just exporting platforms; it is building regional industrial ecosystems, a model visible in Poland’s missile localization efforts and now echoed in Estonia’s localization clause. For small frontline states, that blend of credible capability, faster production, and industrial partnership is becoming as decisive as maximum range.