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Korean Air announced on the 24th that it will begin producing Medium-Altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MUAVs) to conduct North Korean intelligence and reconnaissance missions, starting next year. The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) held a Defense Acquisition Program Committee meeting on the 18th to deliberate and approve the mass production plan for the MUAV. The project, with a total cost of ￦980 billion($1=￦1325), aims to develop and produce the most advanced unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) by 2028, and Korean Air will be responsible for its production. Korean Air completed the development of the MUAV last year and named it ‘KUS-FS’. With the approval of the production plan by DAPA, the production is scheduled to commence next year.
The KUS-FS, equipped with a high-performance sensor, is a strategic-level weapon system designed to monitor and conduct real-time reconnaissance of critical targets at altitudes higher than that of the aircraft. According to Korean Air, only four countries in the world currently possess such a system. One of these is the MQ-9, known by the nickname “Reaper,” which is a UAV operated by the U.S. military. However, the KUS-FS is equipped with an even more powerful 1200 horsepower engine compared to the MQ-9. It is capable of flying at altitudes of 6 to 13 kilometers and capturing high-resolution images from distances beyond 100 kilometers.
Recently, Korean Air has been increasing its presence in the defense industry, with a focus on UAVs. A Korean Air spokesperson stated that while Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) primarily focuses on manned aircraft, Korean Air has strong capabilities in UAV development. They also mentioned that Korean Air has been winning various technology research projects related to stealth UAVs. In September 2021, Korean Air won the contract for the DAPA’s wideband stealth UAV technology research project. In August of the previous year, Korean Air was selected as a priority negotiator for the Defense Science Research Institute’s project to develop a stealth unmanned aircraft.
In June of last year, Korean Air inaugurated the Next-Generation Stealth UAV Development Center in Daejeon. This initiative involves the establishment of a dedicated organization specializing in UAV development, aiming to further enhance the accumulated UAV technology expertise and to take a leading position in the future stealth UAV market. Apart from MUAVs, Korean Air has also undertaken the development of various drones to address limitations in the flight duration of conventional battery-powered drones. These include hybrid drones capable of flying for over 2 hours and inspection drones that can simultaneously deploy up to 4 units for aircraft body exterior inspections.
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