Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, guided the defence science research work of the Unmanned Aeronautical Technology Complex and the detective electronic warfare research group on March 25-26.

Accompanying him were Pak Jong Chon and Jo Chun Ryong, secretaries of the WPK Central Committee, Ri Pyong Chol, general advisor for the munitions policy of the WPK Central Committee, Kim Yong Hwan, president of the Academy of Defence Sciences, and other senior officials of the WPK Central Committee and defence science research institutes.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un learned about various kinds of reconnaissance and suicide attack drones, newly developed and being produced by an institute and enterprises under the Unmanned Aeronautical Technology Complex, and oversaw their performance test.

The test confirmed the innovative performance of a new-type strategic reconnaissance drone with the detective ability to track and monitor different strategic targets and enemy troops’ activities in the land and sea. And it fully demonstrated the striking capability of suicide drones to be used for various tactical attack missions.

Kim Jong Un made an important assessment of the military effectiveness and strategic value of the strategic reconnaissance drone with improving performance and of the suicide attack drones to which new artificial intelligence was applied.

Expressing his active support for the new plans of the complex, he agreed on its proposal for expanding the production capacity.

Saying that the field of unmanned equipment and artificial intelligence should be top-prioritized and developed in modernizing the armed forces, he stressed that it is important to work out a correct long-term national plan for promoting the rapid development of the work to use intelligent drones and perseveringly and dynamically propel it as a medium- and long-term project, in keeping with the trend of modern warfare in which the competition for using intelligent drones as a major means of military power is being accelerated and the range of their use is steadily expanding in military activities.

As already stated, a lot of objective changes that come with the rapid sci-tech development call for updating a large part of our military theory, practice and education, he said, adding that it is an important task facing our Party at present to adopt a correct, appropriate line and solution.

Saying that the WPK has advanced a clear line for perfectly combining unmanned weapon and equipment systems with operational plans and fundamentals of battle, regarding it as one of the important components of the armed forces modernization programme to put weapons and equipment on an unmanned basis, he reiterated the scientific and practical orientation and ways for accelerating the continuous qualitative and quantitative and technical transformation in the development and production of unmanned weapons and equipment and for putting operational ability on a highly-developed basis.

He learned about the performances of reconnaissance and intelligence gathering means and electronic jamming and attack systems newly developed by the detective electronic warfare research group and its long-term plan.

He said that our special means with the application of up-to-date technology would play a big role in monitoring potential threats and collecting vital intelligence and that they would give full play to their might in enhancing our army’s capability of conducting various kinds of intelligence-gathering operations and neutralizing the enemy’s combat means of various missions.

Expressing great satisfaction over the fact that new electronic jamming and attack weapon systems have been developed and gone into production, he spoke highly of the fact that the stages of the WPK’s line of modernizing the army are being qualitatively attained thanks to the clear brains of our younger-generation defence science research group.

Saying that the Unmanned Aeronautical Technology Complex and the detective electronic warfare research group have a very important role to play in coping with the development in modern warfare of today characterized by confrontation between intelligent hi-tech weapon systems, he gave an important task related to the immediate duty and the long-term goals to be attained by this sector.