By Ankit Panda
North Korea managed to fly (and crash) a couple rudimentary drones over Seoul. Do its drones pose a threat?
It’s been a busy week on the Korean peninsula. After an exchange of artillery fire, and a scrambling of South Korean jets, most news focused on a couple North Korean drones that were downed in South Korean territory. One of the drones crashed on Baeknyeong Island on Monday, following the exchange of artillery fire between the North and the South. The other crashed in Paju, Gyeonggi Province some days earlier on March 24. The drones (like most North Korean military hardware) are unimpressive and appear to be incredibly rudimentary implementations of an unmanned surveillance aircraft solution. Still, many are regarding the fact that North Korea was able to penetrate South Korean airspace with drones as a new sort of threat. These drones are certainly a new threat and worth taking seriously, but they will likely not be (and should not be) the highest priority for South Korean military planning.
According to one Associated Press report, South Korean experts say the drones “underscore a potential new threat that must be taken seriously.” According to South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin, North Korea has been working on remotely piloted aircraft systems since the early 1990s and the two downed drones that were uncovered this week in South Korea do not represent the cream of the crop in terms of the North’s actual capabilities. Indeed, reports suggest that the drones each carried consumer-grade Canon and Nikon digital-SLR cameras, available for purchase online for around $1000 each. In an attempt at stealth on a shoestring, both drones were painted over in a sky-blue pattern to allow them to blend in against blue skies as they photographed the ground below.
On the surface, the fact that North Korea was able to get two incredibly rudimentary aircraft, manned or unmanned, in the skies above Seoul, and successfully snap pictures of the South Korea President’s residence should be concerning. However, there are a few reasons that this incident should not spook South Koreans.
Read the full story at The Diplomat