South Korea to train 500,000 drone warriors, expand unmanned arsenal
Seoul said it will train 500,000 drone warriors and cut a 2029 drone target to about 60,000, as North Korea’s unmanned threat and Yoon’s case sharpen the stakes.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it would train 500,000 so-called drone warriors and push unmanned systems into frontline service across the army, navy, air force and marines, a sweeping effort to make cheap drones a routine part of combat rather than a niche capability. Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back made the case in Seoul on June 25, saying drones should be treated as a basic battlefield tool, while the ministry said it would rely entirely on domestically produced components instead of Chinese parts.
The scale of the plan is striking against the size of South Korea’s shrinking military. Its active-duty force fell from about 560,000 troops in 2019 to about 450,000 in July 2025, and the number of eligible male conscripts could drop to 100,000 a year by 2045. Training 500,000 drone operators therefore points to a force-wide shift that goes well beyond buying equipment, and into the way South Korea expects soldiers to be trained, organized and sustained.
The procurement side is equally ambitious. The ministry initially said it would produce 110,000 drones by 2029, then revised that target down to about 60,000, with around 11,000 to be introduced in 2026. It also plans to buy more than 20,000 low-cost expendable drones, while adding AI-based swarm systems, loitering munitions, lasers and high-power microwave weapons to counter enemy drones. A new defense drone headquarters will be created under the ministry, and drone operations will move away from a centralized command structure toward the individual service branches.
South Korea is making that shift as both Koreas accelerate drone development and military planners absorb lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East, where small unmanned systems have helped change battlefield tactics at low cost. Officials in Seoul also see a direct threat from North Korea, which is advancing its own unmanned systems and could use them against military or civilian targets in the South.
The political sensitivity is heightened by South Korea’s own recent drone controversy. On June 12, 2026, a Seoul court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison over drone incursions into North Korea that prosecutors said were meant to inflame tensions and help justify his failed December 2024 martial law declaration. That case has made drones a security issue and a democratic one in Seoul, where the new push now mixes deterrence, domestic industry and command reform into a single program.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
