The military will develop an unmanned search vehicle for operations inside the heavily armed demilitarized zone, a government agency said Wednesday.
The development plan was approved during a government committee meeting presided over by Defense Minister Han Min-koo, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration said in a release.
The unmanned search vehicle, once deployed, will help reduce the military's damage from a landmine blast like the one blamed on North Korea in early August. The incident maimed two South Korean soldiers near the border.
"When the unmanned search vehicles are deployed, they will play a role of stably aiding highly dangerous search and reconnaissance operations by frontline military units," said Kim Si-cheol, spokesman for the agency. "We will embark on the development project in 2017 with an investment of 780 billion won (US$674 million)."
Some 100 sets of such vehicles will be churned out from 2024, he added.
The DMZ is a 4-kilometer-wide, thickly forested military buffer zone, which separates the two Koreas in the middle of the Korean Peninsula. It is a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
The authorities, however, have no plans to load firearms onto the vehicles for a combat mission and are separately planning to develop a robot for finding landmines, another agency official said on condition of anonymity.
Also approved during the meeting was a plan to produce an initial 15 sets of unmanned aerial vehicles, according to the agency.
Under the plan, the UAVs will be placed in Army units and division-class units of the Marine Corps in the frontline areas from next year, it added. (Yonhap)
The development plan was approved during a government committee meeting presided over by Defense Minister Han Min-koo, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration said in a release.
The unmanned search vehicle, once deployed, will help reduce the military's damage from a landmine blast like the one blamed on North Korea in early August. The incident maimed two South Korean soldiers near the border.
"When the unmanned search vehicles are deployed, they will play a role of stably aiding highly dangerous search and reconnaissance operations by frontline military units," said Kim Si-cheol, spokesman for the agency. "We will embark on the development project in 2017 with an investment of 780 billion won (US$674 million)."
Some 100 sets of such vehicles will be churned out from 2024, he added.
The DMZ is a 4-kilometer-wide, thickly forested military buffer zone, which separates the two Koreas in the middle of the Korean Peninsula. It is a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
The authorities, however, have no plans to load firearms onto the vehicles for a combat mission and are separately planning to develop a robot for finding landmines, another agency official said on condition of anonymity.
Also approved during the meeting was a plan to produce an initial 15 sets of unmanned aerial vehicles, according to the agency.
Under the plan, the UAVs will be placed in Army units and division-class units of the Marine Corps in the frontline areas from next year, it added. (Yonhap)
