Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Northwest Islands... Electrification Possible After 20 Years of Introduction Efforts

The Northwest Islands Defense Command conducted a defense exercise as part of the national defense training, involving joint forces from the army, navy, and air force to prepare for various enemy provocation scenarios.

[Asia Economy Yang Nak-gyu, Military Specialist Reporter] A domestically produced unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for surveillance of the northwestern islands will be introduced in 2032. It has been 20 years since the military started the project, citing the need for UAVs following the Yeonpyeong Island shelling incident, and it is pointed out that a surveillance gap is inevitable for the time being.

According to the military on the 28th, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) held a Defense Acquisition Program Promotion Committee meeting the day before and decided to integrate the reconnaissance UAV mounted on the KDX-II destroyer and the UAV for surveillance of the northwestern islands into a single platform to be developed domestically. A total project cost of 570 billion KRW will be invested from 2023 to 2031, so deployment will only be possible after 2032. If domestic development fails, deployment will inevitably be delayed further.

The military pushed forward the UAV project after the 2010 Yeonpyeong Island shelling, emphasizing the urgent need for surveillance of the northwestern islands. In July 2011, DAPA signed a purchase contract for tactical airships. However, the project was delayed. The technical agreement between the U.S. company supplying the airframe and the Israeli company supplying the cameras and radar was delayed, and defects occurred during the acceptance inspection process. Subsequently, the tactical airships were repeatedly damaged and crashed, leading to the project's cancellation.

The military has claimed that reconnaissance and surveillance could be reinforced through the Israeli IAI Heron, a corps-level UAV owned by the Army. However, the Heron also crashed at sea in February 2018 and was unable to be deployed for missions in the northwestern islands. Additionally, two of the three unmanned reconnaissance drones used for video acquisition on the Navy’s intelligence ship Shinsegi-class crashed, further increasing the surveillance gap over the northwestern islands.

A military official said, "Ten years have passed with repeated failures in the UAV introduction project," and pointed out, "It was due to hasty project promotion and a lack of careful consideration in selecting the model."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.