Old weapons, new tricks: North Korea seeks to turn old Soviet fighter jets into kamikaze drones

A South Korean soldier aims a jammer gun to shoot down a drone during the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise held on Tuesday near the Daecheong Dam in Cheongju City, North Chungcheong Province. The 11-day exercise kicked off on Monday. Yonhap

Defense analyst calls for preemptive strategy to deal with UAVs

By Kang Hyun-kyung

North Korea has kicked off a military modernization program recycling hundreds of outdated fighter jets into suicide drones, according to a veteran intelligence analyst.

"The North is trying to transform Soviet fighter aircraft into kamikaze drones armed with precision-guided munitions," Choe Su-ryong, a former agent of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), told The Korea Times on Monday, citing an informant based in North Korea.

"These unmanned suicide drones will be used to strike South Korea's major industrial and infrastructure facilities."

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

The fighter aircraft he was referring to are the MiG series of jets made by the former Soviet Union.

North Korea is known to have over 400 MiG fighter aircraft, ranging from MiG-17 fighter jets produced in the 1950s to MiG-29s introduced in the 1980s.

In a media interview in October 2022, Shin In-kyun, a defense analyst and the founder and president of the Korea Military Network, said North Korea has a total of 431 MiG fighter jets_ 107 MiG-17 fighter aircraft, 100 MiG-19s, 150 MiG-21s, 56 MiG-23s and 18 MiG-29 fighters.

"Some say the North has approximately 800 fighter jets in total. But many of them are so obsolete that they don't function as intended and therefore don't deserve to be called fighter jets anymore," he said.

Quoting the latest edition of "The Military Balance," a book assessing the military capabilities and defense economics of 171 countries every year, Shin said North Korea has 465 fighter aircraft, including 431 MiGs.

Retired Air Force Col. Hong Sung-pyo, a senior research analyst at the Korea Institute of Military Affairs based in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province, said he believes the information about North Korea adapting outdated fighter aircraft for use as suicide drones sounds "quite convincing."

"The North Korean military authorities would be tempted to repurpose the outdated fighter jets, such as MiG-17 and MiG-19, to use them as unmanned suicide attack drones," he told The Korea Times.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."

Unlike other military drones that can be remote-controlled and return to base after dropping bombs or explosives, suicide drones are designed to crash into a target and explode. Depending on the UAV, various types of explosives and missiles can be mounted on the drones.

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

"Like drones, the RAS is unmanned, but how it works is very different from that of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)," he said. "Physically, the RAS is much bigger than average UAVs, and the former was used to test air-to-air missiles. Fighter jets take them into the air and let them fly. They are used as targets and the fighter jets shoot them down to test their missiles."

Considering its past operation of the RAS, Hong said he believes North Korea would probably have the capability to produce, operate and maintain indigenous UAVs as well as the technology to turn outdated fighter jets into armed suicide drones.

"We saw North Korea's Global Hawk copycat drone which was unveiled at the July 27 military parade. Some say the unmanned drone looks like a Global Hawk, but its capabilities are questionable. But I think North Korea's drone is more advanced than it is depicted in the media," he said.

A MiG-19 fighter jet is seen behind armed soldiers in Suwon Air Base in Gyeonggi Province in this 1983 file photo. North Korean Air Force Capt. Lee Ung-pyeong flew the fighter jet to defect to South Korea in February 1983. North Korea is believed to have 100 MiG-19 fighter aircraft. Korea Times file

North Korea's drones are emerging as a fresh security threat to South Korea following the war in Ukraine in which UAVs have been used extensively to destroy military and industrial facilities, identify enemy locations and conduct intelligence and reconnaissance missions.

President Yoon Suk Yeol urged related Cabinet ministers to bolster the nation's readiness level to thwart possible North Korean attacks against South Korean infrastructure.

"In the event of war, North Korea will try to destroy South Korea's infrastructure and major facilities to paralyze its system," he said while presiding over a Cabinet meeting held on Monday when the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise commenced.

Yoon singled out nuclear reactors sites, industrial technology complexes and sites related to national communications networks as possible targets that North Korea will want to destroy with its missiles, drones or cyberattacks.

"In case these facilities are destroyed, South Korea's wartime military capabilities will be severely weakened, which will consequently cause harm to our citizens," he said. "Therefore, we need to dramatically upgrade the system to protect our major national facilities from various types of North Korean attacks."

Hong, the retired colonel, warned that North Korea will want to take advantage of suicide drones not only for wartime attacks, but also for peacetime provocations as well.

"Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, some 12,000 drones have been used. While following news about the war, I came to be concerned about the consequences of countries' growing interest in drones," he said.

"Imagine what will happen if someone is trying to repurpose delivery drones, which are currently being used in the West, as a military tool to strike civilian targets during peacetime. Due to their level of precision and lethality, the consequences will be devastating."

In Africa and Latin America, armed groups and terrorists have used drones to kill civilian targets. In 2018, for example, two GPS-guided drones, laden with explosives, were used in a failed attempt to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Among others, Col. Hong said anonymity, convenience, and precision are some of the strengths of drones as weapons, which would motivate countries like North Korea to take full advantage of suicide drones to fulfill their military goals.

"As seen in the war in Ukraine, when someone attacks others with suicide drones, it is very difficult to detect who the attacker is. This is simply because the drones are already destroyed when they hit their targets and there are no pieces of evidence that can be used to point to the person or the group that sent them," he said.

He added the attackers can hide their identities and pretend they have nothing to do with the attack.

"By doing so, the perpetrators can avoid sanctions because there is no evidence to prove they did that," he said.

Col. Hong encouraged the soon-to-be-established UAV Operation Command under the defense minister to draw up a set of "aggressive, preemptive measures" to curb North Korea's possible drone-based provocations.

"There are various military and non-military, open and clandestine operations South Korea can conduct to retaliate in the event of North Korea's UAVs-based provocations," he said. "The offensive use of military tactics sometimes is the best way to defend against North Korea's aerial provocations."

In this image captured from a video released by the U.S. Department of Defense, a North Korean MiG fighter jet intercepts an American surveillance plane over the East Sea in June 2003. AP-Yonhap