[Defense Commentary] Six Key Drones of the Army and Air Force Ahead of Deployment

[Monthly Defense Times Editor-in-Chief An Seung-beom] The Air Force and Army are actively developing drone systems. While the Army's drone system development and pilot operations have been well known, relatively little is known about the Air Force's drone systems.

As of March 2022, the Air Force is pursuing the introduction of six types of drone systems.

The low-observable unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for combat use, whose full-scale development has begun, will enter mass production immediately after the prototype development is completed, establishing a KF-21 fighter jet and MUM-T system.

Development of a domestically produced drone to replace the currently operated Harpy loitering munition has also started. A technology demonstrator for GPS jammer signal detection, tracking, and strike has been produced, and key technologies such as small RF direction finders and terminal guidance control are under development. Additionally, drones for base perimeter security, explosive ordnance disposal, electronic warfare jamming tracking, and fixed-wing swarm drones are emerging.

The base perimeter security drone is a small drone that monitors the surroundings of Air Force bases and can be immediately deployed to the origin area in case of an incident to identify and track targets in real time.

The explosive ordnance disposal drone remotely controls improvised explosive devices from a distance, securing and transporting explosives using a lifting device and gripper for disposal.

The GPS jamming tracking drone is used for information collection to identify GPS jamming occurrences and provides interference source analysis results to ground control equipment.

The fixed-wing swarm drone is undergoing flight tests to secure collision avoidance, autonomous flight technology for fixed-wing swarm flight, and distributed swarm network technology for mutual communication.

Meanwhile, the Army's drone systems include ultra-small reconnaissance drones capable of 25 minutes of flight, perimeter security drones with a 3 km range and 30 minutes of flight time, vertical takeoff and landing drones capable of flying at 100 km/h, attack drones capable of dropping 4 kg bombs, and composite drones that perform direct collision strikes with 0.5 kg bombs, all currently in pilot operation.