South Korea plans to train every member of its nearly half-million-strong military to operate drones as easily as they handle personal firearms. 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. This initiative is part of broader efforts to equip individual military units with more cheap and expendable drones for surveillance and strike missions, along with deploying more counter-drone lasers and microwave weapons. The South Korean defense minister cited the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East as inspiration for such military reforms with a focus on drone technologies. South Korea is not alone in looking to Ukraine’s example in training and equipping its military with more drones. However, 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.
South Korea must overcome significant hurdles toward fielding 500,000 'drone warriors.' 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. The South Korean military may struggle to achieve and maintain an active-duty force of at least 500,000 troops, especially since mandatory military service excludes women. Another practical constraint is that the South Korean military is not planning to equip everyone with drones even for training purposes. Ministry officials clarified to The Korea Times that 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. 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, but China also dominates the world’s commercial drone market through leading drone manufacturers such as DJI.
The South Korean military’s personnel shortage, especially among noncommissioned officers and officers expected to help train new conscripts to use drones, is another challenge, 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. Lessons from Ukraine show that while Ukraine does not field a military where everyone is trained to be a drone pilot, it has scaled up training to produce tens of thousands of drone operators. 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. Meanwhile, 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. Though it’s less clear what kind of training lessons they may be imparting to their comrades.
Source: arstechnica
