Koreas speed up drone race after unprecedented incursions

 

According to Bloomberg, South Korea’s cabinet this week approved plans for a new drone command to be set up by the military around September to provide what the government called an “overwhelming response” to any provocations by North Korea’s unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.

 

North Korea appears to have started testing a new large drone at its Panghyon airbase, NK News reported last week based on satellite images. The aircraft was the largest it has seen to date, with an estimated wingspan of about 115 feet (35 meters), bigger than the 65-foot drone spotted at the airbase earlier this month, it said.

 

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have let each other know that they intend to step up their drone programs, setting the stage for an escalation after each sent the aircraft across the border in December. That marked a first in the conflict between the two states that started on June 25, 1950, and was halted through an armistice about three years later.

 

Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown how drones can be used quickly and cheaply to survey the battlefield, deploy small explosives and strike fear in an adversary. For North and South Korea, drones could prove invaluable along a border where each positions hundreds of thousands of soldiers. 

 

“Drones are currently hitting that spot of being threatening and menacing without yet creating full-blown, open hostilities that could have broader geopolitical ramifications,” said Beryl Pong, a faculty member at the University of Cambridge and the National University of Singapore specializing in contemporary warfare.