The 2 Koreas have been shut observers of the wars in Ukraine and Iran – not least as a result of features of the conflicts mirror how each side assume they may win a possible struggle on the peninsula. The continued change of long-range drones and missiles, specifically, resembles the kind of struggle each Koreas envision for themselves: a deep strike contest. To this finish, each have just lately begun creating low-cost, long-range assault drones, with some techniques slated to be operational within the close to time period.
Lengthy-range artillery, ballistic missiles, and nuclear weapons have, to this point, formed either side’s view of the army steadiness and whether or not deterrence holds on the peninsula. Armed drones will quickly enter the image.
These drones will exacerbate the South Korean army’s current gaps in surveilling the North. Pyongyang’s rising missile and nuclear arsenal and diversified launch platforms have made the issue acute. With low-cost assault drones, North Korea’s potential to disperse, conceal, and make use of offensive firepower will additional outpace South Korea’s capability to destroy it.
This pattern is at odds with the Lee administration’s bold timeline for gaining wartime operational management from the US. South Korean forces will want extra capabilities to fulfill the qualitative situations beforehand established by the 2 allies.
Drones on the Korean Peninsula
Lengthy-range drones – unarmed aerial autos with operational vary far past the ahead fringe of battle alongside the armistice line – have been a function of the inter-Korean army competitors for the previous 20 years. The primary identified operational use was in 2010 when a North Korean reconnaissance drone was noticed throughout the Yonpyeong Island shelling. Since then, periodic drone incursions have been a function of the inter-Korean low-intensity skirmishes.
In 2014, South Korea recovered the wreckage of three North Korean drones lower than 50 miles from the border. In December 2022, 5 North Korean drones overflew Seoul, together with the presidential workplace, and returned North. In response, then-President Yoon Suk-yeol floated the concept of South Korean forces conducting reciprocal drone incursions into North Korea. North Korea claimed South Korean drones overflew Pyongyang in October 2024. Whereas formally denied, public evaluation of North Korean-released pictures visually matched developmental South Korean reconnaissance techniques.
Rudimentary platforms – small, fixed-wing, turboprop, and unarmed – have featured in these largely symbolic aerial incursions to this point, alongside unpowered balloons. There is no such thing as a proof that both facet has employed armed drones in cross-border operations. Drones that had been operationally used on the peninsula, nevertheless, symbolize solely a small subset of a broader stock that features techniques with larger vary and functionality.
North Korea has been importing Chinese language and Soviet drones and has been creating indigenous fashions for reconnaissance missions because the Eighties. In 2023, North Korea unveiled a high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) reconnaissance drone and a medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) multi-role drone. Each are qualitatively totally different from its current unmanned plane – the latter, for instance, is succesful of firing a missile – although restricted numbers are within the stock.
For South Korea, abortive improvement efforts within the late Chilly Battle resumed within the Nineties with a focus on the tactical surveillance drones supporting the Military’s floor operations. Curiosity in long-range techniques got here within the late 2000s when the Company for Protection Improvement (ADD) began creating a home MALE, KUS-FS, and the Republic of Korea Air Drive procured International Hawks from the US. 4 International Hawks had been delivered by 2020, and the KUS-FS is anticipated to enter service in 2027.
The wars in Ukraine and Iran have catalyzed the 2 Koreas’ curiosity in massed, low-cost, and armed long-range drones whereas they proceed to spend money on massive, subtle unmanned techniques. In 2024, Kim Jong Un ordered officers to “set up a mass-production system and start full-scale operation” of “suicide assault drones.” Hundreds of North Korean laborers, and probably engineers, have additionally reportedly been despatched to the Yelabuga manufacturing facility in Russia producing copies of Iran’s Shahed one-way assault (OWA) drone.
For South Korea, the ADD is creating the KUS-LM – dubbed the “Okay-LUCAS” with reported vary and payload figures similar to the American OWA drone known as LUCAS – with plans to deploy it earlier than 2030. The system has began trials on land and sea.
Theories of Victory
These investments by each Koreas in long-range unmanned techniques, for each strike and surveillance, will alter the phrases of the inter-Korean army competitors. Up to now few a long time, the principle area of the inter-Korean army competitors has change into a deep strike-centric contest. The power to wage a strategic air marketing campaign – one circuitously linked to the bottom battle – is now central to how either side assesses the steadiness. Each side seem to imagine loitering munitions match into this air energy paradigm.
North Korea has pursued missile and nuclear weapons know-how to carry in danger its neighbor and its ally, the US, with long-range fires. South Korea’s Ministry of Nationwide Protection assessed that, in a contingency, North Korea plans a shock huge firepower assault to create favorable situations and pressure a speedy finish to the struggle. Even absent an offensive intent, the specter of catastrophic injury from nuclear missiles and traditional munitions that bypass defenses creates a strong deterrent meant to forestall assault and guarantee regime survival.
Beneath Kim Jong Un’s rule, North Korea has expanded its missile pressure to ship each typical and nuclear warheads deep into South Korea and, more and more, past the peninsula. The nuclear arsenal, too, has elevated each numerically and in centrality to North Korea’s safety coverage. The KPA Floor Drive additionally operates 1000’s of artillery items – with ample vary to achieve Seoul – out of hardened websites concentrated south of the Pyongyang-Wonsan line.
North Korea seems to see drones as a complementary factor of its deep strike technique, enabled by mass, concealment, and dispersal. Certainly, Kim Jong Un famous three attributes that make OWA drones a wanted funding for the Korean Folks’s Military: low manufacturing value, easy manufacturing course of, and ease of integration into current firepower. Drone salvos launched at the side of ballistic and cruise missiles might overwhelm South Korea’s air and missile defenses. Their comparatively low value additionally reduces the financial burden of procurement on North Korea’s constrained financial system.
In response to a nuclear-armed adversary and worry of abandonment from its ally, South Korea has pursued a counterforce “Three Axis system” to function a non-nuclear deterrent. This concept has seen iterative conceptual updates over the previous decade. At this time, the strategy rests on a three-pronged framework that mixes preemptive strikes on North Korean nuclear and missile amenities (“Kill Chain”), multi-layered missile protection (Air Drive-operated “Korea Air and Missile Protection” towards ballistic missiles and the Military’s in-development “Low-Altitude Missile Protection” towards artillery and short-range rockets), and overwhelming retaliatory firepower towards army and management targets (“Korea Large Punishment and Retaliation”).
Efforts prior to now 5 years have sought to combine drones into the technique. The Yoon administration established the Drone Operations Command in September 2023 with an specific mission to develop an offensive idea of operations – earlier than that, South Korea’s army had solely used drones for reconnaissance and surveillance. Regardless of preliminary criticism of the command as redundant, and its subsequent disestablishment for its implication in Yoon’s 2024 self-coup try, the South Korean protection neighborhood seems to acknowledge the necessity for this perform. The mission continues within the Protection Drone headquarters, the just lately fashioned successor physique that focuses on pressure improvement, manning, and equipping – albeit shedding any operational position to the companies.
South Korea’s Surveillance Issues
Deterrence on the peninsula holds at the moment as each side possess long-range strike property that impose what, for now, are unacceptable dangers and prices if the taking pictures begins. Whereas floor forces stay vital in each Koreas’ pressure constructions, the principle enviornment of the inter-Korean competitors at the moment lies in deep strike. The drone incursions prior to now decade and a half launched a further low-intensity factor to this competitors. The event and eventual deployment of armed drones will create new necessities for South Korea to operationalize its Three Axis technique and for the US to defend its treaty ally.
South Korea’s restricted intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capability stands out as a obvious vulnerability in anticipating this future. All three “axes” of its technique rely upon a near-perfect and near-persistent intelligence image over North Korea, to observe management actions, find hid amenities, monitor cellular missile launchers and submarines, establish incoming missiles – and now, detect drone launch websites and their launches. It is a tall order. South Korea’s ISR capabilities have lengthy been recognized as a weak spot, because it traditionally has relied on U.S. capabilities.
ISR drones and extra ISR satellites are meant to complement current gaps to operationalize the Three Axis technique, however even with techniques anticipated to return on-line within the subsequent 5 years, cellular targets will stay troublesome to search out, repair, and monitor. South Korea’s space-based ISR layer, in improvement since 2023, leaves roughly 2-hour home windows between commentary alternatives over potential launch websites. The South Korean Military’s Low Altitude Missile Protection, anticipated to return on-line in 2029, was designed to counter artillery threats and could also be constrained by inadequate interceptors and sensor networks towards drone salvos.
Thus, within the close to to medium time period, North Korea’s potential to disperse, conceal, and make use of its drones, missiles, and nuclear weapons will outpace South Korea’s capability to destroy them. Actually, North Korea’s speedy operationalization of OWA drones could require larger dedication of U.S. ISR property to the peninsula.
The added problem to South Korea’s protection technique thus poses questions in regards to the Lee administration’s bold push for wartime operational management switch by the tip of his time period in 2030. The proposed change to the command construction of U.S. and South Korean forces has been tied to enhancements in South Korea’s capabilities to guide the Mixed Forces Command, together with the capability to function its personal ISR property to fulfill operational necessities. The Lee administration has insisted on “no extra situations” being positioned on the switch necessities. But, the deteriorating army steadiness on this area will necessitate extra functionality to fulfill the established qualitative situations for making main adjustments to the Mixed Drive.
The writer appreciates suggestions from colleagues on the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research – Pat Bazylczyk, Mark Cancian, Emma Gargiulo, and Andy Lim – and the 2026 cohort of the Nationwide Committee on American International Coverage Korea fellowship.