Illustration = Lee Cheol-win
At the closing ceremony of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, 1,218 drones took off at once and performed a spectacular flying show. It was a Guinness record. The Chinese drone company broke the record two months later with a show of 1,374 drones. At the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, 1,824 drones flew. The swarm of drones that used to dance in synchrony are now changing the landscape of war.
▶ A drone secretly approached a warehouse in a village in Donetsk, Ukraine. Russian tanks and anti-aircraft guns were hidden inside the warehouse. As soon as the drone that flew in found the tank, it rushed in and destroyed itself. Other drones also went in one after the other and destroyed the remaining tanks and vehicles. A drone worth 700,000 won blew up a tank worth 2.8 billion won and expensive weapons in an instant.
▶ Ukrainian drones are small Chinese-made drones with bombs attached and used for self-destruction. When an enemy tank appears, it is dispatched within 5 minutes and even identifies and attacks the faces of enemy soldiers hidden in trenches and armored vehicles. A Russian tank unit took a heavy hit. The vanguard of the Russian Black Sea Fleet was also hit. Maritime drones successively sank Russia’s main landing craft and patrol ships worth over 80 billion. 30% (25 ships) of the fleet were destroyed, and the commander in chief of the Navy was dismissed. Drones also attacked strategic bombers and oil and refining facilities at Russian air bases. To avoid this, armored vehicles and trucks were fitted with tin roofs, and aircraft fuselages and wings were fitted with tyres.
▶ Russian forces stationed in Syria suffered a crude drone attack which resulted in the destruction of their fighter jet and dozens of people losing their lives. An expensive interceptor missile was fired, but failed to stop him. Houthi rebels attacked Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities with about 10 drones, causing damage worth trillions of won. They also attacked merchant ships from various countries with drones worth 2.6 million won. The US fired SM-2 missiles, which cost 2.7 billion won per shot, but the more they were shot down, the more they lost. Israel spent 1.8 trillion won to prevent drone attacks from Iran.
▶ Even advanced fighter jets, interceptor missiles, and tanks are helpless against the onslaught of cheap drones. The cheap weapons of poor countries make a mockery of the advanced weapons of powerful countries. All countries are developing ‘anti-drones’ such as jammers, which shoot out jamming waves to block drones, down drones, which force landings, and drone killers, which shoot nets or sticky bombs and capture them directly. They also make cheap laser weapons that cost thousands of won per shot. Our military is also said to be late securing small civilian drones and deploying them at battalion level or below. In 2022, when five North Korean drones roamed the airspace, helicopters were deployed and machine guns fired, but failed to capture them. Now, drones must be deployed in all factions and used for reconnaissance and attack. A drone war is upon us.
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