South Korea's Ministry of National Defense inaugurated the Defence Drone Agency on 2 November 2026, Yonhap reported. The opening ceremony took place in Pocheon, about 40 kilometres north of Seoul, with Vice Defence Minister Lee Doo-hee attending.
The agency replaces the former Drone Operations Command and serves as the central organisation coordinating strategy and technical development for unmanned and counter-drone systems across all military branches. Individual armed services will handle combat operations, while the Joint Chiefs of Staff retains overall operational control.
The move responds to North Korea's drone advances, including recent simulated swarm drone strikes against mock border posts and tanks. A defence ministry official said the military takes North Korea's drone capabilities seriously, noting that assessing drone threats requires looking beyond aircraft performance to the whole detection, tracking and countermeasure system.
South Korea plans an urgent purchase of more than 20,000 low-cost disposable combat drones and aims to accelerate the K-LUCAS programme to develop domestic long-range loitering munitions. The ministry is also adopting faster certification for civilian hardware modelled on the United States Blue UAS system and seeking to remove Chinese components from its supply chain in coordination with allies.
