🇰🇷 Drones Rising: Korea's Military Shift 🚀🔥

SOUTH KOREA’S AMBITIOUS DRONE TRAINING PROGRAM
South Korea plans to train every single member of its nearly half-million-strong military to operate drones as easily as they handle personal firearms. This ambitious goal was announced as the South Korean military seeks to maintain a technological edge in its 70-year border standoff with the larger military of a hostile North Korea.

THE “UNIVERSAL COMBAT TOOL” STRATEGY
The goal is to make drones a “universal combat tool” for all troops by training them to use drones like a “second personal weapon,” said Ahn Gyu-back, South Korea’s Minister of National Defense, in a June 26 briefing reported by Reuters and other media outlets. The announcement coincides with broader plans to equip individual military units with more cheap and expendable drones for surveillance and strike missions, alongside deploying more counter-drone lasers and microwave weapons.

REORGANIZING FOR DYNAMIC TECHNOLOGIES
Meanwhile, South Korea’s former drone operations command headquarters that used to have direct command authority over combat units will be reorganized to focus on collaborating with South Korean industry on developing and procuring commercial drone technology, according to The Korea Times. This shift reflects a recognition of the need for rapid technological adaptation.

INSPIRATION FROM GLOBAL CONFLICTS
The South Korean defense minister specifically cited the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as inspiring such military reforms with a focus on drone technologies. The lessons learned from these ongoing conflicts are driving a significant overhaul of South Korea’s defense strategy.

A NUMERICAL DISADVANTAGE
South Korea is hardly alone among the many countries looking to Ukraine’s example in training and equipping their militaries with more drones. But Ukraine’s use of drones and military robots as a force multiplier to offset its numerical disadvantage on the battlefield versus Russia’s larger military may carry special resonance for South Korea, given that the South Korean military’s current active-duty strength of 450,000 personnel faces a numerical disadvantage against North Korea’s active-duty military consisting of more than 1.2 million soldiers. “Warriors.”

CHALLENGES TO CONSCRIPTED FORCE
The first challenge is that South Korea’s conscripted military has been shrinking in recent years due to the country’s declining birthrate, according to The Korea Times. So the South Korean military may struggle to merely achieve and maintain an active-duty force of at least 500,000 troops, and especially as long as the country’s mandatory military service excludes women.

DRONE TRAINING SCALE AND TIMELINE
The defense ministry is starting out by providing 11,000 “training drones” to military personnel this year, with the goal of eventually deploying 60,000 drones across the military by 2029. This phased approach aims to manage the logistical and training demands effectively.

DOMESTIC PRODUCTION PRIORITIES
An additional complication comes from the South Korean military looking to procure drones with 100 percent domestically produced components and no Chinese components due to security concerns, according to the defense minister’s comments reported by Reuters. China is North Korea’s main economic and security partner. However, China also dominates the world’s commercial drone market through leading drone manufacturers such as DJI.

THE TEAM RETRIEVER PERSPECTIVE
South Korean companies are building new military attack drones, but the defense ministry may struggle to find enough commercial drones made without Chinese components to train hundreds of thousands of military conscripts, said Min-Cheol Jung, a cofounder of the Team Retriever counter-drone red team based in South Korea, in a War on the Rocks article. Jung also highlighted the South Korean military’s personnel shortage, especially among noncommissioned officers and officers expected to help train new conscripts to use drones.

UKRAINE’S DRONE MODEL
Instead, Ukraine’s effective use of military drones comes from having widely deployed specialized drone operator teams to back up front-line infantry units, standing up the Unmanned Systems Forces branch of the military to develop drone doctrine and coordinate deep strike campaigns, creating a digital battle management system that provides updated battlefield information for rapid decision-making, and developing a homegrown drone industry that can mass produce millions of drones each year while nimbly innovating in response to changing battlefield conditions.

NORTH KOREAN LEARNING
Though it’s less clear what kind of training lessons they may be imparting to their comrades. North Korean soldiers who survived their encounters with Ukrainian drone warfare while fighting on Russia’s side have already been rotating back home to instruct the North Korean military.

US MILITARY ADOPTION
Taking its own cue from Ukraine’s drone innovations, the US military has also been integrating drone familiarization and counter-drone measures into basic training for its own new recruits, while the Pentagon has requested $54 billion for new drone and counter-drone systems in its fiscal year 2027 budget.

CONTINUED SUPPORT & PARTNERSHIPS
Currently, 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the US military intervention on South Korea’s side during the Korean War, which began with a North Korean invasion. This demonstrates a continued commitment to regional security and stability.