South Korea to Train 500,000 Troops as Drone Operators
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- Ahn Gyu-back, South Korea's defence minister, said "all soldiers should be able to use drones like a second personal firearm," announcing a plan to train all 500,000 authorised personnel across the army, navy, air force, and marines as "drone warriors"
- South Korea will procure about 11,000 commercial drones for training by end of 2025, scaling to 60,000 by 2029, alongside more than 20,000 low-cost disposable combat drones by 2030
- K-Lucas, Seoul's domestically developed long-range loitering munition being fast-tracked for deployment, is modeled on the US Lucas drone — itself reverse-engineered from Iran's Shahed-136, which Russia deploys extensively in Ukraine
- Seoul's military fired about 100 shots and failed to down a single drone during a 2022 incident when five North Korean drones breached its airspace, with one entering the no-fly zone above the presidential office
- North Korea has gained battlefield drone warfare data through its deepening military partnership with Russia, where it has deployed thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine
Why it matters: South Korea is closing a documented capability gap exposed in 2022, when its military fired 100 shots and missed all five North Korean drones. The 500,000-troop training scale, backed by a 60,000-drone procurement pipeline by 2029, gives Seoul a structural countermeasure to Pyongyang's Russia-accelerated drone program and fast-tracks the locally developed K-Lucas loitering munition.
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