{"id":66959,"date":"2026-06-27T22:34:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T22:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/66959\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T22:34:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T22:34:51","slug":"south-korea-to-acquire-20000-low-cost-military-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/66959\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea to Acquire 20,000 Low-Cost Military Drones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/dronefront.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">&#13;<br \/>\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782599691_441_WhatsAppVideo2026-05-15at09.23.58.gif\" alt=\"The Drone Front\" width=\"1280\" height=\"539\"\/>&#13;<br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">South Korea unveiled on Friday 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cRecent conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East clearly demonstrate that drones have emerged as game changers on the battlefield,\u201d Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back told reporters in Seoul.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">South Korea remains technically at war with the North after their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNorth Korea is also <a href=\"https:\/\/thedefensepost.com\/2026\/05\/27\/north-korea-missile-launch-system-test\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">continuing to develop<\/a> 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,\u201d Ahn said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He said the government will push to rapidly deploy its Korean Long-range Uncrewed Combat Attack System (K-LUCAS) \u2014 a domestically developed munition believed to be similar to the US LUCAS developed by reverse-engineering Iran\u2019s Shahed attack drones.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The military also plans to acquire more than 20,000 low-cost expendable drones, Ahn said, without disclosing where from.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They would include short-range reconnaissance drones and small attack drones, known as loitering munitions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The military will also work on developing artificial intelligence-powered drone swarms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">South Korea will deploy counter-drone systems along its <a href=\"https:\/\/militaryai.ai\/south-korea-frontline-ai-strategy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">frontline areas<\/a> from next year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ministry also reaffirmed its goal of training 500,000 \u201cdrone warriors\u201d to operate drones as a \u201csecond personal weapon\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It will procure about 60,000 domestically produced commercial drones to train them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">South Korea\u2019s Drone Operations Command, established in 2023, will be reorganized into a new Defense Drone Headquarters, the ministry said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The command drew scrutiny after a drone operation over Pyongyang in October 2024 under then-president Yoon Suk Yeol.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yoon has since been sentenced to 30 years in prison for sending drones into North Korea to \u201cmanufacture\u201d a crisis ahead of a disastrous martial law bid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; South Korea unveiled on Friday a plan to acquire 20,000 military drones to fend off North&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14106,936,171,33],"class_list":["post-66959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-conflict","tag-drone","tag-korean","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}