Thread by @elisabethmalom1

🧵Don't send the fighter jets: I speak to drone experts & Hanwha Defense to make sense of the reasons behind #SouthKorea's failure to shoot down the North's drones on Dec 26. and what it must do to ensure this doesn't happen again. Latest for @defense_news
defensenews.com/unmanned/2023/…

2. While it’s unlikely the South’s military was unaware of NK drone development efforts, the “sophistication of the systems as well as their ability to swarm and evade detection” did come as a surprise, said Ken Gause from the US-based Center for Naval Analyses.

3. Gause said that this suggests “NK has benefitted from outside technology, potentially from Russia or Iran.” @David_Hambling also noted that #Russia’s use of Iranian drones against UKR “is likely to encourage NK to 📈 efforts in this direction, posing an asymmetric threat."

4. Some experts agreed that South Korea’s failure to shoot down the drones in December simply comes down to the fact that drones are complex and difficult to counter — something that is especially true for smaller and faster UAVs.

5. Hambling said “Many air defenses were previously designed to specifically filter out small, slow, low-flying objects, as there were almost invariable birds which would otherwise create many false alerts.”

6. Case in point: morning after Dec 26 incident, #SouthKorea preemptively deployed fighter planes to its border in response to what turned out to be a flock of birds.

7. For Bruce Bennett, defense researcher at RAND the country's failed C-UAS measures are due to a lack of focus on that capability. He points out the Army has faced limitations to its military budgets, tremendous demographic problems, and a lack of personnel from 2005 and on.

8. Which ultimately he believes led to [a downsizing] of the military, and the trade-off was to acquire new, expensive technologies for the manpower the Korean army were losing.

9. What's next: Hanwha spokesman told me that the firm is scheduled to complete dev. of a laser anti-aircraft system in 2023, w/ initial production expected for 2024. It will make the second iterance of what it called “a truck-mounted laser anti-aircraft system” over the next ys.

10. Experts say more is needed: Bennett calls for SK to be prepared not only to jam UAVs but also target their GPS systems w/ enough electrical power to make the system fail. Hambling recommends it carry out complete asses. of its air defense systems to identify shortcomings.

11. As well as where the drones were launched from/maintaining an ongoing list of possible future launch sites. However, Gause warns that NK does have the ability to pop up from underground facilities to launch things like missiles and UAVs, giving #US & Korea very little warning