A drone incident during a joint Korea-US military exercise Thursday was triggered when the US side notified a working-level official at the Army's 1st Corps of a drone mission via text message instead of following formal approval procedures.
The official who received the text neither reported it to superiors nor relayed it to relevant units, handling the matter as routine. That lapse caused the airspace control procedures required between the two allies to break down entirely.
A Joint Chiefs of Staff official said Monday at a briefing on the results of a combat readiness inspection probe into the drone incident, held at the Defense Ministry's Cheongsongje facility, that "the situation was confirmed to have arisen from a communication error between working-level personnel that led to a failure in airspace control procedures on the ground."
rimsclub@heraldcorp.com
