South Korea's defence ministry spent 1.1 billion won on drone events marred by crashes and rule breaches

South Korea's defence ministry budgeted a total of 1.093 billion won for drone-related events between 2022 and this year, according to ministry data submitted on 26 October to the office of Yu Yong-weon, a People Power Party lawmaker on the National Assembly's National Defense Committee, as reported by the Korea Economic Daily. The events were meant to scout drone technology and bring civilian designs into the armed forces.

The data break the spending down by year: 192 million won in 2022, 128 million in 2023, 287 million in 2024 and 153 million last year. This year the ministry set aside 333 million won for two events, a drone battle contest and a defence drone technology exhibition.

Both events this year ran into trouble. At the drone battle contest in June, a company that had used a foreign-made airframe in breach of the entry rules was among the teams that reached the finals, and the ministry disqualified it only after a tip-off following the preliminary results. People Power Party lawmaker Sung Il-jong also questioned the fairness of the judging, pointing to a former executive of a participating firm on the panel and to a finalist run by the head of a sponsoring association. The ministry said at the time it would add on-site inspection of entrants' aircraft.

At the defence drone technology exhibition at the Seungjin training ground in Pocheon on 16 September, six of the 17 demonstrations failed, including a jet-powered unmanned aircraft built by Korea Aerospace Industries and a direct-impact attack drone. The ministry said all drones already in trial service with the military flew successfully and that the failures involved prototypes from private firms. It pointed to possible radio-frequency interference from the large crowd, and a ministry official said rehearsals the day before had gone well until more than 1,000 people gathered.

Other public trials also went wrong. On 25 August, two medium-sized suicide drones launched from the amphibious ship ROKS Marado in a navy and Agency for Defense Development combat experiment both fell into the sea, which the agency blamed on a launch tube defect. At the Armed Forces Day ceremony on 1 October, two of four target drones were shot down by the Cheongwang laser weapon as planned, but one crashed after its optical fibre was damaged and the other drifted out of the safety zone in poor weather and was brought down by the military.

In its submission, the ministry said its drone events were shifting from simple contests between civilian prototypes towards realistic drone and counter-drone matches and wider demonstrations inside military test beds, and that it would keep expanding such opportunities so companies could develop technology without fear of setbacks.

The scrutiny comes as funding rises sharply. The government's 2027 budget proposal raises drone and counter-drone spending to 806.1 billion won from 678.8 billion won this year, an increase of about 19 per cent, and lifts training funds for the plan to train 500,000 drone operators from 29.6 billion won to 77.1 billion won. South Korea set up its Drone Operations Command in September 2023, after North Korean drones crossed into its airspace in December 2022.

Yu said trial and error was unavoidable in drone development but that problems found in demonstrations needed thorough analysis and fixes backed by systematic military oversight. He added that on a future battlefield crowded with drones, the ability to control and operate many of them reliably would matter as much as the performance of any single aircraft.