A North Korean air force technology commander was recently court-martialed and executed for so poorly maintaining drones that several attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had to be destroyed.
A Daily NK source in the North Korean military said Wednesday that the technology commander of a squadron of drones at Taetan Airbase was turned over to a court-martial and executed on Dec. 10, taking blame for “four attack UAVs being rendered unusable.”
The attack UAVs in question — high-speed kamikaze drones — can reportedly be loaded on trucks or trains for use at any time or any place, and are deployed to regions along the border with South Korea.
The source said the attack UAV issue revealed itself during the large-scale air force exercises in October and combat readiness inspections of air force units ordered by the General Staff Department and Defense Ministry from mid-October.
“[Commanders] took issue with how the four attack drones had long become akin to scrap metal in their storage tunnels, and several others were inoperable due to issues involving routine technical inspections,” he said.
Ultimately, the technology commander of the drone squadron took responsibility for the issues.
He was reportedly executed around 50 days after he was arrested by air force command prosecutors.
The source said the executed officer was a prominent commander who had helped form the squadron in 2015 and had taken charge of operating the technology of the attack UAVs since the early stage of their deployment.
Within the unit in question, the rapid investigation, trial and execution of the commander has reportedly sparked criticism that like a lizard, the country’s leadership was cutting off its own tail to survive.
Airmen say that they have “never received proper training since the formation of the drone squadron at Taetan or the deployment of the weapons, and that neither the General Staff Department nor the Ministry of Defense’s general equipment bureau had shown much concern for technological matters, but with problems being raised during the inspection, the commander became a scapegoat.”
The source said the General Staff Department and Ministry of Defense’s general equipment bureau usually conduct comprehensive inspections of all personnel, weapons and facilities after large-scale air force exercises, reporting their findings up the chain of command.
This time, however, the loss of the UAVs due to poor management was too much of a political burden to cover up, so commanders dealt with the matter with extraordinary haste.
The source said because the drone unit was a “special unit” that North Korea’s supreme command pinned high hopes upon when it was founded, “it must have been hard for either the General Staff Department or Ministry of Defense’s general equipment bureau to ignore and move past the problem.”
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