South Korea to acquire 20,000 low-cost military drones
“Recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East clearly demonstrate that drones have emerged as game changers on the battlefield,” Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back told reporters in Seoul.
South Korean Army drones during a live fire military exercise at the Seungjin Fire Training Field in Pocheon, 30km south of the border with North Korea, on May 21, 2026. (File photo: AFP/Jung Yeon-je)
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SEOUL: South Korea unveiled on Friday (Jun 26) a plan to acquire 20,000 military drones to fend off North Korean threats, citing lessons learned from wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
A small number of high-cost weapon systems dominated the battlefields of the past, but the mass deployment of low-cost drones is transforming the nature of warfare.
“Recent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East clearly demonstrate that drones have emerged as game changers on the battlefield,” Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back told reporters in Seoul.
South Korea remains technically at war with the North after their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
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“North Korea is also continuing to develop a wide range of unmanned aerial capabilities, posing growing threats not only to South Korean military facilities but also to critical national infrastructure and civilian targets,” Ahn said.
He said the government will push to rapidly deploy its Korean Long-range Uncrewed Combat Attack System (K-LUCAS) – a domestically developed munition believed to be similar to the US LUCAS developed by reverse-engineering Iran’s Shahed attack drones.
The military also plans to acquire more than 20,000 low-cost expendable drones, Ahn said, without disclosing where they would be from.
They would include short-range reconnaissance drones and small attack drones, known as loitering munitions.
The military will also work on developing artificial intelligence-powered drone swarms.
South Korea will deploy counter-drone systems along its frontline areas from next year.
In the longer term, it plans to add directed-energy weapons such as lasers and high-power microwave systems to its arsenal, as well as low-cost interceptor drones, Ahn said.
The ministry also reaffirmed its goal of training 500,000 “drone warriors” to operate drones as a “second personal weapon”.
It will procure about 60,000 domestically produced commercial drones to train them.
South Korea’s Drone Operations Command, established in 2023, will be reorganised into a new Defence Drone Headquarters, the ministry said.
The command drew scrutiny after a drone operation over Pyongyang in October 2024 under then-president Yoon Suk Yeol.
Yoon has since been sentenced to 30 years in prison for sending drones into North Korea to “manufacture” a crisis ahead of a disastrous martial law bid.
Source: AFP/dy
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