South Korean Military Admits It Failed to Shoot Down Any of the Five North Korean Drones that Entered Its Airspace
Shooting down drones, especially high flying ones with out endangering civilian property is not easy, but it is also not impossible:
President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday criticized the military’s response to North Korean drones that intruded across the inter-Korean border the previous day, saying the incident exposed some problems with South Korea’s readiness.
Korea Times
Speaking at a Cabinet meeting, Yoon said the military should be better prepared for such intrusions by North Korean drones and vowed to create a military unit specializing in unmanned aerial vehicles as part of efforts to strengthen South Korea’s air defense capabilities.
“We have a plan to create a military drone unit tasked with monitoring key military facilities in North Korea. But we’ll expedite the process of creating the drone unit after the incident yesterday,” he said. “We’ll also introduce state-of-the art stealth drones to strengthen our surveillance capability.”
Yoon also voiced regret over the National Assembly’s decision to cut the military budget for anti-drone operations, saying the incident once again showed how dangerous it is to rely on North Korea’s “good faith” and paper agreements for peace.
You can read more at the link, but it is amazing that funding for anti-drone operations was cut by the National Assembly. Drones is obviously the future of warfare. Their importance can be seen right now in the war in Ukraine. This incident should give President Yoon all the rationale he needs to pour money into the new drone command he wants to establish.
Okay. Now I might start liking Yoon.
I’m interested in what kind of high-tech flyswatter they’ll invent and deploy.
I just hope they don’t buy them from China, as China is better friends with Pyongyang than with Seoul.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201911/18/WS5dd1f1a0a310cf3e35577f27.html
Assembly has too many communist in it.
According to Korean language newspapers, the National Assembly did cut funding for Coast Guard UAVs and short range UAVs not anti-drone operations, so I have trouble understanding why the Korea Times translated it as “anti-drone operations.”
Because the Korea Times is after scandal, even if they have to generate it.
In any case, if the funding was there, it did not provide a meaningful anti-drone defense for northern Seoul.
For all his “warts and pimples”, Yoon is on track here. And the military better step up to defending against “asymmetric warfare”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare
This type of “dirty pool” essentially beat Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, South Vietnam, Nationalist China, and dozens of other countries in the recent past (say, since 1960).