The most striking feature of modern war is that hundreds of drones are mobilized for attacks. The battlefield has become a no man's zone. The risk of being killed instantly by a drone attack has grown the moment you enter.
Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer (CRO) at Sensofusion, said this at The Chosun Ilbo's 17th Asian Leadership Conference (ALC) held at the Shilla Hotel in Jung District, Seoul, on the 20th, noting that drones have changed how we wage war. Sensofusion is a Finnish company that builds military drone defense systems. As drone warfare has emerged as a core of modern conflict since the war in Ukraine, the importance of defense systems that detect enemy drone attacks in advance and neutralize them is growing.
At a session on the theme of Drones and cyberwar: the fronts of modern warfare reshaped by technology, he assessed that the pattern of modern war is evolving into drone swarming. Hypponen, the CRO, said, Today's wars are defined by technology unlike in the past, and the core pillars are drones and cyberattacks, adding, In particular, in the war in Ukraine, it has become routine to use drones in large numbers for a single strike. The types of drones deployed in attacks have diversified, from aerial drones flying overhead to ground drones, maritime drones, and underwater drones.
Furthermore, Ukraine attacked a Russian submarine with an underwater drone last year, he said, noting that because the cost of an underwater drone is about one-hundredth that of a Russian submarine, Ukraine was able to secure an asymmetric edge. Because drones cost less than weapons like submarines, they can be operated in swarms of hundreds, enabling a relatively inexpensive, one-off strike system.
Drones have also changed the scope of the front line. In past wars, the width of the front was 1 to 2 kilometers, or 5 kilometers at most, but as short-range drones were deployed to the battlefield, it expanded to dozens of kilometers. Hypponen, the CRO, said, The battlefield has become a no man's zone that no one can enter, adding, On the front line, quadcopters and octocopters armed with explosives are constantly patrolling, hunting for targets to kill. He continued, When drones first appeared on the battlefield, they were widely seen as cheap airplanes, but now they are regarded as bullets, adding, Short-range drones are used regularly to kill soldiers, and in the case of the war in Ukraine, casualties from drone attacks exceeded those from bullets, grenades, artillery, mines, and others combined.
Hypponen, the CRO, stressed that existing air-defense networks are not sufficient to respond to drone-centric attacks. Traditional air-defense systems focused on single, fast-flying targets such as fighter jets, bombers, and missiles, he said. But drones are small, deployed in large numbers, and fly low and slow, making them hard to detect accurately with equipment like radar.
Defense corporations including Sensofusion are building drone-specific detection systems on the battlefield by collecting data from various sensors, including radio-frequency sensors, optical sensors, infrared sensors, acoustic sensors, and radar sensors. The goal is to maximize the ability to detect enemy drones while minimizing the exposure of friendly drones. Hypponen, the CRO, said, After detecting enemy drones, defense begins by jamming, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks to disrupt drone operations, or launching small interceptor drones to shoot down large fixed-wing drones, adding, Ukraine is blocking about 80% of Russian drones with these methods.
Park Woo-jin, head of the Ground Research Institute at Hanwha Systems, also stressed that Korea needs to build a response system in line with the changing nature of war. Park said, In future wars, there is a high likelihood of simultaneous attacks ranging from long-range missiles to long-range artillery, short-range drones, and long-range drones, and the question is how to respond to these new threats, adding, In attack environments where many targets are incoming, it is difficult for humans to identify them one by one, so we need to prepare defense systems capable of detecting and identifying threats based on artificial intelligence (AI), simulations in virtual environments, and Digital Twin technology.
This year's ALC is being held for two days on the 20th and 21st under the theme, An age of great transformation: toward a new balance. More than 170 political, economic, and cultural experts from around the world, including Mick Mulvaney, former White House chief of staff, Jenny Shipley, former prime minister of New Zealand, and Joel Mokyr, a 2025 Nobel economics laureate and distinguished professor at Northwestern University, are seeking solutions on how to respond to the global crisis heightened by conflicts such as the U.S.-Iran war.