The most eye-catching thing at the recent North Korean military parade was a large, high-tech drone. We looked at how far our drone development has come. We have also almost completed the development of advanced drones, but we have not yet been able to ‘deploy them into actual combat’.
Kim Tae-hoon, a defense reporter, exclusively covered what was going on.
<Reporter> This is a video of a domestic used-altitude drone obtained exclusively by
SBS .
It is known for its performance comparable to that of the U.S. state-of-the-art UAV Reaper, which flies for dozens of hours at an altitude of more than 10 km and conducts reconnaissance and attack missions.
The Agency for Defense토토사이트 Development started developing it in 2012, but it has not yet been deployed for more than 10 years.
The development of the next corps-class drone modeled after the Gray Eagle, the latest unmanned reconnaissance attack aircraft in the United States, is in a similar situation.
The follow-up process was suspended when the Board of Audit and Inspection initiated an audit in May of last year, when the development of the two drones was almost finished.
After about a year of auditing, the Board of Audit and Inspection pointed out defects such as wind direction and landing instability when wind speed suddenly changed, and abnormal icing control due to altitude ascent, and decided to discipline five researchers.
The Agency for Defense Development immediately raised an objection, and a reexamination is currently underway.
A senior military official told SBS , “The matter pointed out by the Board of Audit and Inspection is not about the performance of military operational requirements, and we cannot accept disciplinary demands because there is a solution.”
Since the development was funded by the national budget, drone audits have been conducted in this way several times before, and last year, eight key researchers in UAV development left the Defense Science Research Institute.
[Song Bang-won/President of Korea Defense Industry Research Association: Development is only successful when trial and error and failure are repeated. If the Board of Audit and Inspection builds up audit performance from trial and error and failure, a vicious cycle of low morale of researchers, suspension of research and development, and power vacuum appears. ] In response to SBS
‘ inquiry , the Board of Audit and Inspection stated that since the development of unmanned aerial vehicles is a confidential project, it is not possible to confirm the facts related to the audit or to express a position. (Video editing: Jeong Seong-hoon)