DoF Briefing: What are North Korea’s drone operators up to?
Writen by: Amith Ravindar, Engineer, Doves Of Freedom
In the very first Doves of Freedom briefing, we thought we would choose the hardest target possible and do a deep dive into North Korean drone operations.
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The purpose of this blog is to bring to light under-reported aspects of drone warfare, a quickly emerging factor in modern military operations.
This topic is a difficult one because the North Korean military itself is notorious for being shrouded in secrecy. However, since North Korean troops were sent to Russia for training and then deployment to Russia’s Kursk region in late 2024, intelligence agencies and OSINT analysts have been able to put together a blurry picture of North Korean military capabilities.
In this article, we’re going to focus on North Korea’s drone capabilities, which the North Korean military first encountered while being slaughtered on the fields of Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
So, what do we know?
North Korean soldiers had likely never encountered first-person view (FPV) drones before combat in Kursk, but they adapted to their capabilities quickly.
According to interviews conducted by NPR with Ukrainian drone operators who first encountered North Korean soldiers, they were completely unprepared for a drone-saturated environment - they moved in large groups of 20-30 soldiers across open terrain, rather than in small, dispersed groups taking advantage of any form of concealment. This alone made it clear that the soldiers likely weren’t Russian.
The image below shows a Ukrainian drone observing mangled bodies of North Korean soldiers shows the results of these North Korean tactics in their first days on the battlefield.
They didn’t even attempt to hide from FPV drones or larger Vampire drones that swooped down on their positions. Moreover, they largely moved on foot rather than with the assistance of armoured vehicles, which made them easy targets for drones.
However, as time went on (Ukraine controlled parts of Kursk for over 7 months), North Koreans seemed to learn about the capabilities of drones and began to develop tactics for dealing with them.
One tactic was simply to use one member of a small group as bait for an incoming FPV drone, while others would shoot at the drone with their assault rifles. Eventually, the North Koreans would become more dispersed, moving in smaller groups and taking advantage of foliage and terrain features for concealment from Ukrainian reconnaissance and attack drones. According to the Wall Street Journal, one North Korean officer was even found with a drone detector.
While communication and integration with Russian forces was a significant problem early on, North Korean soldiers were able to achieve some level of coordination with their Russian allies, with North Korean infantry moving forward, while Russian command supported them with drone strikes, artillery, and glide bomb strikes.
While at this stage in the conflict, it’s fairly accepted that North Korean drone operators weren’t present on the battlefield, it’s clear that both for North Korean soldiers and their commanders, this was a crucial introduction to a drone-centric battlefield. This would have been their first taste of what it means to defend against FPV drones, as well as work alongside them on the battlefield. The next logical step, with technical support from Russia, would be to field their own drone units to work alongside their infantry and artillery crews.
North Koreans have been continually engaging in military training and cooperation with their Russian counterparts since the 2024 Kursk offensive and subsequent Russian counteroffensive.
According to a November 2025 release from the Institute for the Study of War, North Korean sappers had been undergoing engineering training at Russian military training centers. According to the same report, there were already around 11000 soldiers operating on the Russia-Ukraine border in an unspecified “security” capacity, to include, but not limited to, demining work.
Upon further investigation, I found a video from a Russian propaganda channel on Youtube, “Lamp of Knowledge”, showing North Korean soldiers engaging in the aforementioned engineering training. One of the frames showed an instructor holding what looks like a 7-inch FPV drone with a munition attached to it.
While there’s never been any explicit reference to North Koreans undergoing drone training, I don’t think it’s a far stretch to assume that if they are already training in explosives handling at Russian bases, there are probably also North Korean servicemembers learning how to build and fly FPV drones.
In any case, most of the knowledge required to build and fly basic FPV drones is available online, and components could be acquired from China. Tactics for combat and munitions use are what would actually be required by potential North Korean drone teams.
North Koreans are being recruited en masse to work in Russia’s drone industry.
Engineering talent and drone operations go hand in hand. Battlefield drone operators simply cannot function without some level of technical knowledge of the drones they are flying as well as more specialized support personnel to fix, modify, and adapt their drones to battlefield conditions.
For that reason, the fact that North Koreans are being recruited to work in Russian factories is significant. Recent reporting from Ukrainian military intelligence indicates that around 12000 North Korean workers will be sent to Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, located near Kazakhstan.
What’s so special about the Alabuga SEZ?
Well, firstly, it presents itself as an area that allows foreign manufacturers to easily establish themselves in Russia while paying a low tax rate. In reality, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022, it has become a manufacturing hub for Shahed drones, which were developed and are continually improved with Iranian and Chinese technical support, including Chinese-sourced components. According to the Institute for the Study of War, approximately 60000 Shahed drones per year can be produced at Alabuga.
According to an interview with Ukraine’s former head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, Pyongyang is already being given the ability to produce and deploy Shahed drones from North Korean territory. Thousands of workers taking part in their production and gaining an intimate understanding of how these drones are manufactured and operated could only increase the scale at which North Korea could deploy these and other types of drones in the future.
North Koreans are operating in a drone reconnaissance role in Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast.
Recently, the Ukrainian military released the following video on Telegram from a drone feed intercepted in Kursk:
In the video, it seems that a North Korean drone operator is surrounded by a stack of FPV drones. According to the Telegram post, North Korean drone operators have been using drones to correct fire from MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems). The fact that there are North Korean operators in the region, and not just Russians of Asian origin, has apparently been confirmed through radio intercepts in the region.
According to the same post, they are assisting in Russian operations in Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast, which is across the border from Kursk and an area in which Russia is conducting offensive operations.
This is perhaps the only visual evidence of North Korean troops taking a drone-oriented role in the Russia-Ukraine war. However, it leads to more questions than answers.
For one, why are North Korean drone operators only being deployed in a reconnaissance role and not a combat role? Are there actual North Koreans carrying out strikes on Russian positions? The drones shown in this video could easily have detonators and munitions affixed to them to operate in a strike role.
Interestingly, I caught this image in a North Korean propaganda video (presented on a South Korean news channel) released much earlier, in March of 2025. This would have been at the tail end of the Ukrainian presence in Kursk Oblast.
This shows North Korean soldiers side by side with what looks to be a Vampire/Baba Yaga drone, with 3 soldiers huddled around a controller while another is pulling security. This is particularly interesting because these larger drones have only been seen thus far in the Russia-Ukraine war. While this drone clearly came from Russia, is it possible that North Koreans have already piloted these drones in Ukraine? Or are they just saving this capability for a future fight on the Korean Peninsula?
I would point out that one weird part of this video is that it showed North Koreans with this relatively advanced drone technology, but none of the tanks in the video had anti-drone cages, which would have indicated a more practical understanding of a drone-centric battlespace. Moreover, a few drone operators out in the open in Ukraine would probably be detected and then schwacked by artillery or FPV strikes in minutes. Did the North Korean soldiers actually even know how to operate this drone, or was it just a prop for propaganda purposes?
A more pressing question is to what extent the Russians and North Koreans solved problems like command and control. Are North Korean operators simply being given orders by Russian officers working with translators, or are they taking orders directly from North Korean officers working at some sort of joint headquarters element? This is important because this represents the difference between the development of an actual, fully-fledged North Korean drone unit and the simple deployment of individual operators, without an overarching command and support structure.
Conclusions
There are clearly North Korean drone operators out there. However, a number of questions remain unanswered. We don’t know how many of these operators there are and in what capacity, besides reconnaissance, they are currently operating. Are they operating larger fixed-wing drones and fiber optic drones? This is unclear.
We also don’t know the extent of the training arrangement between the Russian and North Korean militaries. Are there groups of North Korean soldiers constantly cycling through specialized drone training centers in Russia?
Finally, there is no open-source information on how drones and drone operators are being integrated into the North Korean military. For example, we know that in the Ukrainian military, most brigades have their own drone element, with larger organizations like the Unmanned Systems Forces focusing exclusively on drone operations. We have no idea what the implementation of drone warfare looks like in the North Korean military.
However, if you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the Doves of Freedom blog to get more updates on this and other information on the world of drone warfare. No doubt, there is more drone-related news to come out of North Korea in the future.
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Amith