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[Green Economy News = Reporter Choi Seong]
Battlefields once dominated by expensive fighters and missiles are developing a major fault line. In Ukraine, FPV (first-person-view) drones that cost only a few million KRW (approximately $1,500) have repeatedly neutralized advanced tanks and air-defense systems whose value reaches into the billions of KRW (approximately $750,000–$6,750,000). Commanders are increasingly favoring swarm tactics that launch hundreds of low-cost, small drones at once.
The strength of a drone swarm lies in mass rather than individual firepower. Deploying large numbers of inexpensive drones to blind radars and saturate air defenses imposes a crippling structural strain on legacy air-defense systems.
As defenders repeatedly expend surface-to-air missiles that cost hundreds of millions of KRW (approximately $75,000–$675,000) to intercept cheap drones, a so-called cost-imposition dynamic has become a decisive variable on the battlefield.
Doctrine built around high-end platforms and overwhelming firepower is being outpaced by low-cost, high-efficiency drone attacks. Drones have moved beyond the label “the poor man’s precision weapon” to become a true game changer in modern warfare.
The integration of artificial intelligence has pushed the drone-swarm threat to a new level. Beyond human pilots controlling individual UAVs, AI swarm algorithms now enable drones to autonomously detect targets and conduct coordinated strikes as an autonomous combat network.
AI-driven drones share data in real time and compute optimal attack routes. If some units are shot down, remaining aircraft immediately reconfigure and continue the assault, creating a composite threat that existing air defenses struggle to counter.
Defense companies worldwide are racing to field next-generation anti-drone systems focused on low interception cost and the ability to engage many targets simultaneously.
In South Korea, Hanwha Systems and LIG D&A are upgrading detection radars and interceptor systems. A Hanwha Aerospace official said, “Development of anti-jamming systems that can neutralize drone communication interference appears to be well on track.” Military authorities are also accelerating efforts to build drone-defense networks to protect key military sites and critical national infrastructure.
The drone threat has spread beyond the front lines into civilian domains. As low-cost drones become more accessible, the risk of incursions at airports, seaports and power plants has risen to the top of security officials’ priority lists.
Ultimately, future conflicts will be decided less by who fields the largest weapons and more by who can detect, prioritize and neutralize large numbers of threats quickly and efficiently. Drone swarms represent a pivotal inflection point that shifts the defense industry’s center of gravity from hardware to software and intelligent networks.
It will not be the states with the most expensive arsenals but those that operate AI-enabled and autonomous defense systems most effectively that shape the future security order. A Defense Ministry official emphasized, “As domestic and international technologies advance rapidly, our military’s drone and anti-drone capabilities must keep pace. Technology development must be accompanied by appropriate policy and legal frameworks.”
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