South Korea is to deploy laser weapons to shoot down North Korean drones this year, becoming the world’s first country to deploy and operate such weapons in the military, the country’s arms procurement agency said yesterday.
South Korea has called its laser program the “StarWars project.”
The drone-zapping laser weapons that the South Korean military has developed with Hanwha Aerospace are effective and cheap, with each shot costing 2,000 won (US$1.45), and also quiet and “invisible,” the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said in a statement.
Photo: AFP
“Our country is becoming the first country in the world to deploy and operate laser weapons, and our military’s response capabilities on North Korea’s drone provocation will be further strengthened,” DAPA said, calling the weapons a game changer for battlefields.
The laser weapons shoot down flying drones by burning engines or other electric equipment with beams of light for 10 to 20 seconds, a DAPA spokesperson said at a briefing.
Five North Korean drones crossed into South Korea, which is technically still at war with Pyongyang, in December last year, prompting Seoul to scramble fighter jets and attack helicopters, which tried to shoot them down, in the first such intrusion since 2017.
Fighting in the 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, and a demilitarized zone between the two Koreas.
Countries including South Korea, China and the UK are racing to develop and deploy laser weapons, also known as directed-energy weapons, the Santa Monica, California-based RAND Corp think tank said.
There is substantial interest in the weapons to help counter the proliferation of uncrewed systems, as well as targeting missiles in flight or satellites in orbit, it said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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