[Editorial] Tighten discipline
UAV-helicopter collision comes after accidental fighter bombing
A South Korean military drone crashed into a helicopter parked at an airfield in Gyeonggi Province.
This accident occurred 11 days after Korean fighter jets accidentally bombed civilian homes in a village in Pocheon, near the inter-Korean border, on March 6.
An Israeli-made Heron reconnaissance uncrewed aerial vehicle belonging to an Army aviation group collided with the parked helicopter while landing on a military airfield in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province, on Monday. The crash sparked a fire, and both aircraft were destroyed.
The drone in question is one of three Herons that the Korean military possesses. One crashed in November due to North Korean interference with its GPS. Another is under repair overseas. The other was completely burned in Monday's crash so a disruption of reconnaissance operations near the western border with North Korea has become inevitable.
Fortunately, there were no casualties, but property damage is estimated to exceed 23 billion won ($15.8 million).
If the Heron had crashed into a civilian area or collided with a helicopter in the air, there would have been casualties. The accident is not something to be viewed lightly.
The Army suspects the crash was due to inexperience in operating the drone and a mechanical malfunction. Thorough investigations and measures to prevent recurrence must follow.
On March 6, two KF-16 fighter jets of the Air Force mistakenly dropped eight bombs on the village area of Nogok-ri, Idong-myeong, Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province, during a Korea-US joint military drill. Thirty-one people were injured and over 140 private homes were damaged.
The accidental bombing is said to have happened because one pilot of the two-jet team entered incorrect coordinates for the planned target.
Even through the exercise was live-fire, no one in the Air Force noticed that the wrong coordinates were entered into the system.
The pilot who flew with the wrong coordinates should have made a proper visual check of the strike point one last time before dropping the bombs, but he did not.
The other pilot was found to have simply followed the first pilot's lead in order to complete their mission of a simultaneous bombing, even though he re-entered the correct coordinates in his plane later due to file transfer error.
An initial investigation revealed laxity in the system for reporting accidents and that mistakes were made in entering the coordinates. If the accident had occurred not in training but in a real war, there would have been much greater damage and likely loss of life.
Regarding these accidental bombings, Air Force Chief of Staff Lee Young-su vowed to make painstaking efforts to correct bad practices in the Air Force.
The drone that crashed into the helicopter belongs to the Army, but correcting wrongs is not a task limited to the Air Force. It is a task for the whole military. They will have to take these accidents as a chance to root out lax practices.
An array of human and technical factors are under investigation to find out the causes of the two accidents, but the essence of the problem lies in inadequate discipline.
The laxity of discipline is probably not unrelated to the precarious situation facing the military.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, the military's commander-in-chief, has been suspended after a parliamentary impeachment vote because of his Dec. 3 martial law declaration. The defense minister, the Army chief of staff and several other generals who command important units have also been either arrested or suspended for their roles in Yoon's martial law plot.
North Korea has gotten closer to Russia through its dispatch of troops to the Ukraine war. The global security order, including alliances, has been shaken since Donald Trump's inauguration as US president.
There are bound to be limitations to what an acting president, acting ministers and acting commanders can do to respond to this situation.
To lessen people's uneasiness about security in these troubled times, the military should give people faith and confidence. Regrettably, these military accidents have raised anxiety for the public.
The military authorities should tighten discipline. The government and ruling and opposition parties should fill important Army posts as their highest-priority task. As far as security is concerned, the opposition parties ought to throw out partisan politics and cooperate with the government.
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