Analysts Call North Korea Trying To Turn Soviet-era Fighter Planes Into Kamikaze Drones With Guided Ammunition

The North Korean drone took part in the military parade. (Source: KCNA)

JAKARTA - An intelligence analyst who is also a veteran said North Korea had started a military modernization program, one of which was by recycling hundreds of outdated fighter jets into kamikaze drones to attack South Korea.

"North Korea is trying to turn Soviet warplanes into kamikaze drones armed with precision guided ammunition," Choe Su-ryong, a former National Intelligence Agency (NIS) agent, told The Korea Times, citing an informant based in North Korea. North Korea, as reported August 25.

"This unmanned suicide drone will be used to attack South Korea's main industrial and infrastructure facilities," he said.

Choe retired from NIS in 2011, ending his two decades of service as a secret agent.

The fighter aircraft he means is a MiG series jet made by the Soviet Union. North Korea is known to have more than 400 MiG fighter aircraft, ranging from MiG-17 fighter jets produced in the 1950s to MiG-29 introduced in the 1980s.

In a media interview in October 2022, Shin In-Kyun, a defense analyst and founder and president of the Korean Military Network said North Korea had a total of 431 MiG_ 107 fighter jets MiG-17, 100 MiG-19, 150 MiG-21, 56 MiG-23, and 18 MiG-29 fighters.

"Some say North Korea has a total of about 800 fighter jets. But many of them are obsolete so they don't function properly and therefore don't deserve to be called fighter jets anymore," he explained.

Meanwhile, retired Air Force Colonel Hong Sung-pyo who is also a senior research analyst at the Korean Military Affairs Institute said he believes information about North Korea adapting outdated warplanes to be used as suicide drones sounds "convincing enough."

North Korea's military authorities will be tempted to reuse outdated fighter jets, such as MiG-17 and MiG-19, to use them as unmanned suicide attack drones, he told The Korea Times.

"Actually, the South Korean military has been preparing for this kind of military threat for a long time," he said.

Unlike other military drones that can be remotely controlled and return to base after dropping bombs or explosives. Suicide drones are designed to hit targets and explode. Depending on the UAV, various types of explosives and missiles can be carried by these types of drones.

Hong further said North Korea had operated a remote autopilot (RAS) system in the 1980s.

"Like drones, RAS is unmanned, but the way it works is very different from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)," he explained.

"Physically, RAS is much larger than UAVs in general, and RAS is used to test air-to-air missiles. Fighter jets carry them into the air and let them fly. They are used as targets and fighter jets shoot them down. to test their missiles," he said.

Given past RAS operations, Hong said he believes North Korea may have the ability to produce, operate and maintain domestic UAVs, as well as technology to convert outdated fighter jets into armed suicide drones.

We saw North Korea's Global Hawk duplication drone introduced at a military parade on July 27. Some say the drone looks like a Global Hawk, but its capabilities are questionable. But in my opinion, North Korean drones are more sophisticated than those described in media images," he said.

Separately, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol previously urged the ministers of the relevant Cabinet to step up the country's readiness to thwart a possible North Korean attack on South Korea's infrastructure.

"If there is a war, North Korea will try to destroy South Korea's main infrastructure and facilities to paralyze its system," he explained, while chairing a Cabinet meeting held last Monday.

President Yoon called the location of nuclear reactors, industrial technology complexes and locations linked to national communications networks a target North Korea may want to destroy with its missiles, drones, or cyberattacks.

"If these facilities are destroyed, South Korea's military capabilities during the war will be very weakened, which will result in endangering our citizens," he explained.

"Therefore, we need to improve the system dramatically, to protect our main national facilities from various types of North Korean attacks," he concluded.