South Korea to train half a million military personnel to become ‘drone warriors’ | South Korea
All of South Korea’s military forces will be trained as drone operators in a comprehensive overhaul of its war strategy, the defense minister said.
“All soldiers should be able to use drones as a second personal firearm,” Ahn Gyu-back, who heads the defense ministry in Seoul, said Friday.
The ministry said the plan envisages training 500,000 authorized military personnel in the army, navy, air force and naval forces as “drone warriors”.
Ahn said wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown that drones are now “a game changer on the battlefield.”
“Low-cost drones operated in large numbers are fundamentally changing the nature of warfare,” Ahn said, warning that North Korea continues to improve its weapons capabilities, increasing threats to military and civilian facilities in the South.
The Army planned to purchase about 11,000 commercial drones for training purposes by the end of this year; In addition to this figure increasing to 60,000 in 2029, there are also more than 20,000 low-cost disposable combat drones by 2030.
Seoul also said it would fast-track the domestically developed long-range mobile munition called K-Lucas. The system takes its name and concept from the American Lucas (low-cost crewless combat attack system) drone, which was reverse engineered from Iran’s Shahed-136 suicide drone, which Russia widely deployed in Ukraine.
South Korea’s plan includes expanding counter-drone systems such as laser and high-power microwave weapons.
The announcement comes amid concerns about North Korea’s drone capabilities and follows a highly embarrassing incident for Seoul security forces in 2022 when five small North Korean drones violated South Korean airspace.
Someone entered the no-fly zone above the presidential office in Seoul. The military scrambled jets and attack helicopters and fired nearly 100 shots, failing to shoot down a single drone.
North Korea’s drone capabilities have increased significantly, thanks in part to its deepening military partnership with Russia; Analysts say this gives Pyongyang access to battlefield data and tactics that would otherwise take years to develop.
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, exposing its military directly to large-scale drone warfare.
North Korea on Friday with leader Kim Jong-un supervised the tests Tactical ballistic missiles and an improved rocket artillery system with a firing range of 90 kilometers are Pyongyang’s efforts to increase firepower along its southern border, he said.
Kim, meanwhile, has vowed to expand North Korea’s nuclear arsenal at what he called an “exponential rate” and described nuclear expansion as the “most correct and unique way” to confront an increasingly unstable world.
