JCS Conducts Joint Air Defense Drill Against North Korean Drones for the First Time in 5 Years

Supplementing Major Weapon Vulnerabilities... Mobilizing Army and Air Force Power

[Asia Economy Yang Nak-gyu, Military Specialist Reporter] The Joint Chiefs of Staff will conduct a joint air defense exercise for the first time in five years. This move to establish an operational system optimized for drone threats comes just one day after President Yoon Seok-yeol reportedly strongly reprimanded Defense Minister Lee Jong-seop over the military's failure to shoot down a North Korean drone.

On the 29th, a military official told Asia Economy in a phone interview, “While the military has been conducting regular air defense exercises, it has been five years since the Army and Air Force air combat forces trained together.” The exercise scheduled for the afternoon is known to focus on supplementing the weaknesses of ground-based air defense weapons that failed to respond primarily to the North Korean drone airspace intrusion, and on enhancing efficiency by organically integrating the Army helicopters and Air Force air combat forces.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

On the 26th, five North Korean drones intruded into our airspace, with one entering as far as Seoul, but the military failed to shoot them down. These drones were small, about 2 meters in size, making detection and tracking difficult. Ground-deployed air defense weapons such as Vulcan guns and Biho complexes failed to detect the targets with their onboard detection equipment and did not fire a single shot.

Although improved detection assets such as localized air defense radars deployed after North Korea’s drone provocations photographing the US THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) base in Seongju, Gyeongbuk in 2017 succeeded in partially detecting North Korean drones, this information was not utilized for firing.

Accordingly, the military is expected to devise a system that can timely share target information detected by detection assets with ground strike assets. In addition, to respond to the threat of low-speed, low-altitude North Korean small drones, tactics are anticipated to be developed to strengthen joint operations among various military aircraft operated by the Army’s attack helicopters, the Air Force’s KA-1 tactical control aircraft, and supersonic fighters, which operate at different speeds.

Furthermore, since no interception shots were attempted in downtown Seoul due to concerns about civilian casualties, training to eliminate drones without causing civilian harm is also expected to be conducted.

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