By Lee Tae-hoon
A prototype of South Korea’s indigenous medium-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (MUAV) will make its maiden flight in November, marking dramatic progress in cutting-edge military technology, a senior official of the country’s arms procurement agency said Friday.
“We’ve successfully completed the development of an MUAV prototype and plan to conduct the test flight on Nov. 11,” said Lee Myeong-woo, director of the Satellite and UAV Project Team at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration.
“We are planning to integrate the electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) that are currently being developed with our own technologies in the prototype.”
He added that his agency may have to seriously consider scrapping the plan to purchase the Global Hawk high-flying UAV (HUAV) from the United States due to budget constraints.
“If the cost for HUAVs blows up far out of proportion, we will need to consider replacing HUAVs with local MAUVs.”
The price tag for a fleet of four Global Hawks is estimated to be $800 million, more than twice higher what was initially predicted.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of National Defense hinted that it may terminate the plan to develop an indigenous UAV to purchase Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawks ahead of the planned takeover of wartime operational control from the United States in 2015.
The Global Hawk is capable of observing and photographing terrestrial facilities and movements of the whole North Korean region, as well as parts of China while flying at an altitude of 18 kilometers or higher for up to 35 straight hours.
The domestically-produced MUAV will be designed to perform missions as high as 15 kilometers for more than 24 hours and will have similar specifications to the MQ-1 Predator medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV of the U.S. Air Force.
The South Korean military has been largely dependent on U.S. intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities of North Korea.