comment: >
  
  Yeah, but if the North Koreans or Russians strike first, they could be seen as the bad guys.
context: Mission failed, better luck next time >
  
  snake? SNAAAAAKE?!
  DUN DUN DUN! >
  
  FISSION MAILED >
  
  Oh snap. Does that mean we all get free power now or is that the other thing? >
  
  No you’re right, but it’ll cost us a subscription. >
  
  This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot)
  
  
  SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea's president on Tuesday called for stronger air defenses and high-tech stealth drones while the military apologized for failing to shoot down North Korean drones that crossed the border for the first time in five years.
  Lt. Gen. Kang Shin Chul, chief director of operation at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a televised statement the military feels sorry because of its failure to shoot down the North Korean drones and for causing big public concerns.
  ADVERTISEMENT. North Korea has touted its drone program, and South Korean officials have previously said the North had about 300 drones.
  
  
  Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: North^#1 Korea^#2 drone^#3 Korean^#4 South^#5 >
  
  It's embarrassing to admit but better under this scenario than a more serious one. Given this and what we are seeing in Ukraine it's clear the value of drones on the battlefield is real and hard to counter. Likely we will be seeing the deployment of anti-drone....drones in the next few years. Launching helicopters, fighter jets, & missiles is just not cost-effective when it's against a drone that probably cost $10k or less. >
  
  The big challenge with fielding drones to defend against drone attacks, is the limited warning you get considering the tiny radar cross section of a drone. You need a much faster "interceptor" drone to be able to catch up with the drone you're trying to target which will also necessarily cost substantially more than for example a Shahed-136 on account of needing to be faster, reusable, and having targeting systems and munitions besides quick and dirty onboard explosives. 
  What I think will be more likely is smaller, cheaper, and likely slower SAMs built to counter drones specifically. A Stinger may be 10 times the cost of a drone, but if you're taking down a drone you don't need nearly as much speed or ordinance (which also brings down the total unit size). Defense will always be behind Offense and will be more expensive, but think more like 3 times as expensive. >
  
  I love your response and it's well thought out. Thank you for it. Per the article:
  “We have a plan to create a military drone unit tasked with monitoring key military facilities in North Korea. But we’ll advance the establishment of the drone unit as soon as possible because of yesterday’s incident,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said during a regular Cabinet Council meeting. “We’ll also introduce state-of-the art stealth drones and bolster our surveillance capability.”
  Right now it appears the mentality is for anti-drone drones (there's gotta be a better word lol). Dont know if thats the correct route. I'd argue with continuing miniaturization of semiconductors you can focus on more advanced radar and detection capacity. My concern with fixed defense assets is they are sitting targets and once they are knocked out its not an easy fix. With drones your line of defense is now variable vs fixed. Some info I've seen on Gen 6 fighters is a hybrid system of manned aircraft that link with supporting drones. We may see something similar on defensive positions. A central hub connected to a network of drones that act in concert with each other for screening and response. How do you rapidly coordinate a kill chain from detection to coordinated attack/response? However, this is all pure speculation on my part. I could see a differentiation of disposable drones vs studier built reusable drones. Different design philosophies and implementation in the battle space/area you want to protect. >
  
  While it's not 100% clear, I read the above as connecting "state-of-the art stealth drones" as being connected to "bolster our surveillance capability.”, especially considering the previous statement regarding monitoring facilities (presumably used to launch drones). That being, that the drone development is for surveillance, not for interception of drones. Later in the article it also states:
  "Kang said South Korea will establish drone units with various capacities and aggressively deploy military assets to shoot down enemy drones." 
  While military assets can definitely INCLUDE drones, I'm not really seeing anything in the article stating that the focus is on developing drones to shoot down drones. 
  
  My concern with fixed defense assets is they are sitting targets and once they are knocked out its not an easy fix. 
  
  I was speaking more towards man-portable systems such as the Stinger. Quick, dirty, easy to deploy, generally not super obvious to spot like various larger batteries with dedicated launchers, radar, and control vehicles.
  Overall as you touched on a bit, there's definitely use cases for air to air drones but at a certain point, you have to start asking yourself what is a drone and what is a missile, and whether you're better off developing large drones with long range and high speed that can keep up with your 6th gen fighter, that have their own munitions to counter drones. Or just creating smaller drone-specific munitions for the existing fighter.
  Then again I'm just some rando on Reddit and hardly an expert. >
  
  You're 100% good and appreciate the thought process. Better we think these things through before spending billions on research that is a dead end. I lean more towards bleeding edge technology that gives you a decisive advantage because I don't believe in fair fights lol. Man portable systems will definitely have their place. I'm sure military analysts are getting plenty of data from Ukraine on best practices, tactics & techniques. I like the idea of a system where we don't have to put everything on a solider responding in a fast acting situation like that. >
  
  I think you'll see a return of anti-aircraft machine guns as drone-killing weapons, only they will be computer-tracking with a human to approve the object being shot at. >
  
  Odds are it'll be something like this mounted on a Bradley base, as opposed to going back to the quad .50 half-tracks. >
  
  Possibly, but you'll probably need to replace the radar on top with an optical targeting system, and if you're really smart have cheap optical targeting pods that are separate from the gun. Drones can come in low enough to be all but invisible until it's too late. You don't want them trading 10 drones for one cwis over and over, so spreading out the sensors will make the attack on the gun less debilitating and allow the gun to see them coming before they can fire on it. >
  
  S. Korea is on a roll with a string of bad news in recent days. >
  
  It's nice to see a large organization admit failure in a system and say they're going to do better in the future. >
  
  What I've learned from the last year, first strike has a huge advantage