U.S. drone nearly downed in chain-of-command breakdown: JCS
Korea’s military said a breakdown in reporting and airspace approval procedures nearly led troops to shoot down a U.S. Marine drone near the inter-Korean border.
A U.S. MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle. The image is not related to the article.REUTERS/YONHAP
Korean troops came close to shooting down a U.S. Marine Corps drone near the inter-Korean border last week because working-level officers on both sides never passed its reported flight plan up their chains of command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Monday. The Defense Ministry removed the commander of the Army unit involved from duty the same day.
"The Joint Chiefs' combat readiness inspection confirmed that this came about because airspace control procedures on the ground broke down through a communication error between working-level officers," a JCS official told reporters.
The official set out two failures on the Korean side.
"We found that the reporting system along the chain of command did not work, and that the formal flight authorization procedure for special use airspace had not been followed, out of custom," the official said.
"This case confirmed the need to comply with the airspace control procedures laid down between Korea and the United States," the official added. "We will build on close communication between the two sides to improve the coordination system for airspace control."
U.S. Marines flew a fixed-wing reconnaissance drone over Paju, Gyeonggi, on Thursday during the Korea Marine Corps Exercise Program, a combined exercise with their Korean counterparts. The Korean military did not know the drone was part of the exercise.
A thermal observation device and radar picked it up, and the military logged it as an unidentified aircraft and issued a "durumi," its operational readiness posture for responding to drone threats. Troops then judged that the aircraft's shape and flight path did not match a North Korean drone, tracked it to where it landed and confirmed it belonged to the U.S. military.
Combat planes of ROK-US Combined Air Forces move to training airspace on July 14.YONHAP
U.S. Forces Korea said afterward that it had shared the flight plan. The Korean military said it had never approved the flight. The inspection found both statements to be accurate: A working-level officer at the Army's 1st Corps took the U.S. notification and passed it neither to superiors nor to the units concerned.
"A U.S. working-level officer texted the drone's flight plan to a working-level officer at the 1st Corps the day before the exercise," the JCS official said. "Sending it by text has been the customary procedure until now."
The U.S. side also skipped a step of its own. Flying above a set altitude in special use airspace requires a written submission to Air Force Operations Command for approval, and that was not done.
"Compliance with airspace control procedures fell short," the official said. "Where the approval authority lies with Air Force Operations Command, the U.S. side had to get approval from Air Force Operations Command, and it did not follow that procedure."
The Defense Ministry said Monday it had removed Lt. Gen. Han Ki-seong, the commander of the 1st Corps, from duty and would investigate. It cited recent matters concerning the corps rather than the drone incident alone.
The 1st Corps has also been under scrutiny since it emerged that it changed its guard-duty guidelines this year so that crew-served weapons at front line guard posts are kept unloaded, with the ammunition stored beside them. The commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command will serve as acting commander.
BY KIM EUN-BIN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
