South Korea's Ministry of National Defense held a national science and technology advisory meeting and adopted the "Basic Plan for Defense Science and Technology Innovation 2023-2037", which selected 30 strategic defense technologies in 10 major fields and focused on investing in the development of directed energy weapons, hypersonic missiles, and missile defense systems.
Photo of Hycore hypersonic missile model displayed by South Korea's Hanwha Group.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the 10 strategic technology areas include: artificial intelligence, manned/unmanned cooperative warfare, quantum information, space, energy, new materials, Internet, sensors and electronic warfare, and response to weapons of mass destruction.
The anti-missile technology includes the long-range surface-to-air missile (L-SAM), known as the "Korean version of SAD," the long-range artillery interceptor system, known as the "Korean version of Iron Dome," and the improved version of the medium-range surface-to-air missile (M-SAM) (the third batch). Military sources said they are striving to develop their own technology for intercepting hypersonic and other missiles and to form a multi-layer anti-missile network.
Directed energy weapons are mainly referred to as "laser weapons". In March last year, the Korea Defense Agency announced the "Future Challenge Defense Technology Business Advancement Direction", and announced the development of technology for 100 kW-class high-power laser weapons to defend against hypersonic missiles.
Manned/unmanned combat is a key technology for the future battlefield and has a wide range of applications. Under the new operational concept, the domestic KF-21 Falcon supersonic fighter will perform coordinated combat missions with the domestic unmanned stealth fighter (UBAV). In November 2021, the Defense Agency released a computerized special effects film demonstrating the KF-21 flying in manned/unmanned formation with three UCAVs.
The first prototype of the KF-21 fighter, which has a partially stealthy design, successfully flew in July last year, and four prototypes have already completed their maiden flights, with South Korea planning to complete finalization within the year and to have it in service by 2026.
