South Korea's Defense Ministry has come under fire for its plan to train 500,000 "drone warriors," with a leading think tank calling it "a misguided policy lacking field understanding and clear operational objectives." Critics say that while drone warfare has evolved into mass attrition combat through the Russia-Ukraine war and Middle East conflicts, Korea's response remains focused on securing operators and individual equipment.
Yang Uk, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, made the assessment in a recently published issue brief titled "Korea's Drone Security: The Universalization of Drone Warfare and Our Response." "There is still a widespread misconception that drone operations become possible simply by expanding operators and equipment without sufficient understanding of drone operations or clear operational objectives," Yang wrote. The criticism takes direct aim at the Defense Ministry's "500,000 drone warriors" initiative, which includes the introduction of training drones and the expanded operation of dedicated demonstration units, suggesting the very direction of the policy is wrong.
The report assessed that the Korean military's current air defense system is designed primarily to counter aircraft and ballistic missiles, leaving limited sustained defense capability against low-altitude, small, and numerous targets. While some tactical units are introducing drone detection equipment, jammers, and close-in interception means, the tactical doctrine and network for integrated operation remain underdeveloped, the report noted. In particular, with the focus placed on acquiring individual drones and detection equipment, the "detect-identify-decide-intercept" chain that is critical on the actual battlefield has not been sufficiently established, the report pointed out.
These limitations could become a fatal weakness if drone attrition warfare is prolonged. The report estimated that during the recent U.S.-Iran conflict, Iran mobilized more than 3,000 unmanned aerial vehicles and nearly 1,000 ballistic and cruise missiles, and analyzed that drones served as a key means of continuously depleting air defense networks. The pattern of repeatedly deploying low-cost drones to exhaust expensive interceptor missiles, followed by mixed salvos of ballistic and cruise missiles, is establishing itself as a new formula in modern warfare, the report explained.
North Korea is also rapidly learning through its participation in the Ukraine war. The report estimated that North Korea has unveiled a series of new suicide drones based on its experience in the Ukraine war and has already dispatched more than 10,000 technicians and workers to Russia to support drone production. The concern is that this could go beyond simple manpower support and become a channel through which production technology and operational experience are transferred to North Korea.
Yang stressed that what matters more than "possessing many drones" is for Korea to build structural resilience that can maintain the link between detection and strike even while expending drones. To this end, he recommended the swift establishment of a "multilayered anti-drone network" integrating AI-based detection grids, tactical-level electronic warfare systems, interceptor drones, and laser weapons. He also said the military's drone operations, which have become subdued since the Pyongyang drone incident, should be reactivated, and that wartime production systems and the cultivation of innovative companies should proceed in parallel to prepare for drone attrition warfare.
