The number of operators — 500,000 — suggests a massive training program to be enacted across all armed services over a considerable time period.

Currently, the Korean Armed Forces field 450,000 active-service personnel in total and that number, too, is set to shrink as demographic change drags the population down.

It was not clear if civilians might join the effort, though Seoul has used civilian cyber hackers in anti-North Korea initiatives in the past.

Some 11,000 drones will be procured by year’s end, and 60,000 through 2029, the Ministry of National Defense stated.

Given industrial security concerns, no Chinese components will be used, Mr. Ahn said.

The swift ascent of low-expense drones as core military assets has taken many armed forces — firmly wedded to classic and expensive crewed fighting platforms such as armored vehicles, artillery and surface warships — by surprise.  

Though used in the Global War on Terror, the Armenia-Azerbaijan war and the Iran war, drones have emerged as the iconic weapon in the high-intensity, high-casualty, high-tech Ukraine War.

There, they are taking primacy over arms such as sniper rifles, anti-tank rocketry, helicopter gunships — even artillery, customarily the key killing instrument on the battlefield.

Former British Armed Forces Minister Al Carn, writing on X on Jan 22, stated that drones are generating over 80% of casualties in the Ukraine War.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being used for short and midrange reconnaissance and supply drops. Kinetically, they are being used for strikes on fortifications, armored vehicles, individual soldiers and other drones. At a longer range, they are striking Russian civilian infrastructure over the border.

Along with UAVs, unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) have proven effective against Russian warships in harbor and off Ukraine’s coast, as well as against boats on the Dnipro River.  

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) — an emerging category — are being used to deliver supplies, evacuate casualties and attack strongpoints.

Advances in artificial intelligence have enabled fully autonomous drones  — war robots. Ukraine revealed early this month that in a 2024 battlefield experiment, 10 “Terminator” quadcopter drones killed Russian troops without human operational control.

South Korea is on the back foot against nuclear-armed rival North Korea.

Though it has double the population of the North, and despite a slight rebound in birth rates in the last two years, the South is suffering a six-year demographic plunge: It fields 450,000 troops, compared to North Korea’s 1.2 million.

Seoul’s last significant combat experience ended in Vietnam in 1975. North Korea is fully up-to-date: It deployed a division-sized force to fight alongside Russia against Ukraine in Kursk in 2024, and continues to engage in artillery/missile and mine-clearance operations.

And while the South’s economy is estimated to be 50-60 times larger than the North’s, Ukraine has proved that cheap, attritable drones can hold off a richer, better-equipped enemy. North Korea is also a master at asymmetric tactics.

One expert welcomed the ministry’s announcement but was critical of timing, lack of detail and what he considers to be mistaken assumptions.

“They should have done this maybe two or three years ago,” said Yang Uk, a defense expert at Seoul think tank the Asan Institute. “This is good, but there are lots of problems.”

One is the apparent lack of doctrine and operational concepts. While Mr. Ahn suggested all, or most, service personnel would become operators, in Ukraine, specialized drone units, many featuring ace “pilots” with high body counts, are the norm.

“This concept of 500,000 drone warriors is full of s—- — they don’t know what is really happening!” Mr. Yang said. “In Ukraine and Russia, they have a dedicated force for drones.”

He also critiqued the concept of drones becoming as important as rifles. While drones dominate the battlefield, infantry have to seize and hold ground, and in the turmoil of combat, cannot operate drones.

“In the fight itself, the drone you need is not the drone you operate,” he said. “You don’t want to control it, you want to voice-operate it.” 

He also pointed to holes in defense-industrial policy. Per government caveat, drones were reserved as a product for small companies, rather than the huge conglomerates that dominate the Korean economy.

That policy shifted in the 2020s, meaning major defense firms may not be fully tooled up to produce drones at scale, Mr. Yang said.

South Korea’s recent experience with drone operations has been dire.

In December 2022, five North Korean drones crossed the DMZ and loitered over central Seoul’s Yongsan District — home to the presidential office and the Ministry of National Defense. Efforts to down them failed; they returned home unscathed.

In October 2024, South Korean drones intruded over Pyongyang, dropping anti-regime leaflets. North Korea claimed that it had downed one, and released images of internal workings and markings, recovered from the wreckage.

Judges have ruled that the 2024 operation was designed by then-President Yoon Suk Yeol to raise tensions on the peninsula, thereby laying the groundwork for his attempt to institute martial law that December.

In the event, martial law was swiftly overturned, and Mr. Yoon was impeached, arrested and tried on multiple charges. He has been sentenced to life in prison for insurrection.