According to reports, South Korea fired drones into North Korea for the first time on Monday in response to Kim Jong Un’s regime launching five unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into its airspace for the first time in more than five years.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff released a statement claiming that the first North Korean drone crossed into South Korean territory at 10:25 a.m. and returned three hours later. In the afternoon, radar picked up on four more of them before they disappeared. It has been claimed that these hostile UAVs spied on and photographed military installations.
Thirty civilian flights out of Seoul’s airports were temporarily canceled after North Korean unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) crossed the military demarcation line and appeared in Paju, Gimpo, on Ganghwa Island.
Yonhap News Agency said one might have come to Seoul to take photos of the presidential office. Local media, including Yonhap, reported that South Korean fighter jets and military helicopters fired about a hundred shots at North Korean drones that had entered South Korean airspace near the western coastal islands.
South Korea wants to buy stealthy drones.
President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday called for stronger air defenses and high-tech stealth drones.
“With the help of military drones, we intend to keep tabs on strategic North Korean military installations. However, given the events of Monday, we will hasten the formation of the drone unit “during a routine meeting of the President’s Cabinet. Furthermore, “we will introduce state-of-the-art stealth drones and strengthen our surveillance capability.”
Budget allocations for short-range reconnaissance drones were cut by 14 billion won ($11 million) in South Korea for 2023. How the latest North Korean provocation will affect military budgets remains to be seen.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff’s chief director of operations, Lieutenant General Kang Shin Chul, admitted on national television that South Korea lacks the technology to detect and destroy surveillance drones with wingspans less than three meters (9.8 feet). It does, however, possess the means to detect and destroy larger combat drones.
Four RQ-4 Global Hawks were purchased by Seoul from Northrop Grumman in 2014 for a total of 965.9 billion won ($812 million). The South Korean military will receive the first plane in December 2019 and the last in October 2020.