Cheap UAVs reshaping modern battlefields, yet drone command faces disbandment
The US-Israeli war on Iran reveals how the paradigm of modern warfare is rapidly changing.
According to Bloomberg News, Iran has continued to pound targets across the Middle East, using Shahed-136 one-way attack drones and small cruise missiles.
US-made Patriot air-defense missiles have reportedly intercepted more than 90 percent of Iran’s Shahed drones and ballistic missiles.
The real issue, however, is the price imbalance: $4 million interceptor missiles are being used to shoot down drones worth just $20,000.
To address the cost asymmetry, the United States quickly rolled out the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a loitering munition modeled on the Shahed.
Drones have moved to the center of modern warfare after proving their effectiveness in the war in Ukraine. Low-cost drones rendered expensive weapons systems ineffective and inflicted heavy casualties. No longer mere tactical support tools, they have become game changers on the battlefield. As conflicts increasingly take the form of wars of attrition, the importance of inexpensive, mass-produced drones is only growing.
Against this backdrop, the South Korean military’s move to dismantle its Drone Operations Command runs counter to the evolving realities of modern warfare.
In January, a subcommittee of a special advisory panel under the Ministry of National Defense recommended disbanding the command. The ministry is said to be reviewing the recommendation positively.
The committee pointed to functional overlap among the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, yet the recommendation seems driven more by its perceived ties to former President Yoon Suk Yeol than by operational logic.
The move coincided with Yoon’s trial over claims that his administration secretly deployed drones to Pyongyang in October 2024 — an act special prosecutors allege amounted to treason.
The advisory panel’s other subcommittee proposed dismantling the Defense Counterintelligence Command as well, which was allegedly implicated in Yoon’s Dec. 3, 2024 martial law decree.
Those responsible for the military’s political involvement must be held accountable, but such accountability should not extend to dismantling a drone operations unit that represents a cornerstone of future military capability.
The committee’s claim of overlapping functions contradicts the original rationale for creating the Drone Operations Command in September 2023, following North Korea’s drone infiltration the previous year.
The command was established because it was difficult to coordinate UAV detection, interception, strike and intelligence missions under the Army, Navy and Air Force’s separate command structures.
If these functions are returned to the individual services, the operational problems the reform was meant to resolve will simply persist.
Although the Defense Ministry planned to sustain a standing force of 500,000 by 2028, troop levels have fallen by 110,000 over the past six years, dropping to 450,000 last year. Drones and robots have become indispensable tools for offsetting the military’s manpower shortfall.
In the meantime, through their deployment to Russia, North Korean forces would have directly observed the destructive power of drones in the Ukraine war. As compensation for their troop deployments and missile supplies, they are widely believed to be acquiring Russian drone technology and operational tactics.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un observed a field test of loitering munitions and ordered their mass production.
If hundreds of low-cost North Korean drones were to swarm in at once, it would be difficult to stop them with the current expensive interceptor systems.
At a time when the military should be accelerating its readiness for drone warfare, the drone command has instead been pushed to the brink of disbandment amid controversy.
The government must reexamine the proposed disbandment of the drone command in light of national security concerns.
It is the responsibility of any government charged with safeguarding the nation to establish an air defense system aligned with the demands of modern warfare and to bolster cost-effective drone capabilities.
khnews@heraldcorp.com
