Korean Air announced on September 5 that it hosted the "2025 Korean Air Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Technology Exchange Conference," which discussed the future direction of Korean-style autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The conference, held over two days at Hotel Nongshim in Dongnae-gu, Busan, brought together more than 250 experts from industry, academia, and research, as well as key military and government officials, including Lim Jingyu, Head of Aerospace Business Division at Korean Air; Park Hongjun, President of the Joint Forces Military University; and Park Jongseung, former Director of the Agency for Defense Development.
This year marked the second edition of the technology exchange conference, which was organized under the theme "Development Direction for Next-Generation Autonomous UAVs to Achieve Air Superiority in Future Warfare." While last year’s event focused on platform-centric technologies such as low observability, this year’s discussions broadened to include unmanned cooperative operations and software (SW) and artificial intelligence (AI)-based mission autonomy technologies.
The conference was divided into three sessions, each featuring themed presentations and open discussions. The first session, "Concepts and Development Directions for Unmanned Air Power Operations," explored the operational concepts of unmanned forces in the Air Force, Army, and Navy, as well as trends in international collaborative combat UAVs, and discussed how these could be applied in a Korean context. The second session, "Next-Generation UAV Platform Development," shared the latest achievements in strike-type and small cooperative UAVs, UAV carrier-based operation technologies, and engine development for UAVs. The final session, "Mission Autonomy Technologies," focused on SW and AI advancements, covering topics such as manned-unmanned integrated open data links, the national defense AI roadmap, AI reliability assurance, and ontology-based decision-making and plan generation.
A Korean Air representative stated, "We hope this technology exchange conference will serve as a starting point for laying the foundation for the practical deployment of Korean-style autonomous unmanned aerial power. Based on our comprehensive development capabilities across the entire UAV lifecycle-from planning, design, and development to system integration, production, and operation-Korean Air will continue to secure global competitiveness in formation and swarm operations, as well as in mission autonomy technologies."
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