factory

SEOUL, June 1 (UPI) — Five workers were killed and two others injured Monday after an explosion and fire at a Hanwha Aerospace defense facility in the central South Korean city of Daejeon, officials said.

The blast occurred around 10:59 a.m. at Hanwha’s plant in Yuseong District, fire authorities told reporters. Some 100 personnel were dispatched and extinguished the blaze shortly after 1 p.m.

All five fatalities were found inside the work area, while two injured workers were rescued and taken to nearby hospitals, officials said. One suffered burns over his entire body and remained in critical condition, while the other sustained relatively minor burns to the neck.

Authorities said the bodies of the victims were severely damaged, making identification difficult.

Hanwha officials said the explosion occurred during a cleaning operation involving tools and equipment used in the rocket-propellant manufacturing process. The company said the exact cause of the blast remains under investigation.

A company official said the cleaning process had not previously been regarded as particularly hazardous because it involved washing equipment with water. The seven people involved in the accident were site workers rather than researchers, he added.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung ordered authorities to mobilize all available resources for emergency response efforts and conduct a thorough investigation into the cause of the accident, according to his office.

Prime Minister Kim Min-seok issued similar instructions, calling for all available personnel and equipment to be deployed for firefighting and rescue operations and to prevent additional casualties.

Hanwha Aerospace Chief Executive Officer Son Jae-il apologized to the victims and their families following the deadly incident.

“We failed to protect the lives of those who were working at what should have been a safe workplace,” Son said. “As the company’s chief executive, I feel a heavy responsibility for this accident.”

Son pledged full cooperation with authorities investigating the cause of the explosion and said the company would conduct a comprehensive review of its safety systems to prevent a recurrence.

The company said it had established an emergency response headquarters at the site and was working with fire, police and other authorities on response and recovery efforts.

The Daejeon facility is one of Hanwha Aerospace’s key defense production sites and develops propulsion systems and tactical weapon technologies.

The accident was the latest in a series of deadly incidents at the complex. Explosions at the facility killed five workers in 2018 and three more in 2019.

In another sign of how much first person view (FPV) drones have changed warfare, Israel says it is building a new factory to produce thousands of these weapons. The move comes as its forces are coming under increasing attack from Hezbollah’s FPV drones in southern Lebanon, something we were among the first to report.

“The IDF is currently establishing a factory that will produce suicide drones (FPV drones) for use in all theaters of war,” Israel Army Radio reported. “The goal of establishing the factory is to industrialize and significantly expand the arsenal of suicide drones that the IDF has, in order to increase capabilities on the battlefield.”

Israel is racing to catch up to Hezbollah in the use of this class of fast, highly maneuverable munitions that became a main strike weapon for both Ukrainian and Russian forces, as well as elsewhere in the world. In our earlier reporting about the issue, we noted that the Iranian proxy has ramped up FPV attacks the deeper Israel has pushed into southern Lebanon. 

You can see some videos of those attacks below.

A big issue for Israel has been that while a domestic manufacturer is producing FPV drones, they include Chinese components, which represent both a security and a supply chain concern, the IDF-funded Israel Army Radio explained. By bringing production in-house to its Technology and Logistics Division, the IDF is looking to boost output, reduce cost and use only indigenous components.

The IDF estimates that the factory will begin supplying the army with drones in large quantities starting in July. Initially, the goal is to produce 1,000 per month, according to Israel Army Radio, with production then being boosted to tens of thousands.

Reaching that goal is not a huge leap for the IDF, one of the world’s most technologically advanced militaries in a country not devastated by the kind of war faced by Ukraine. In comparison, as we have reported in the past, Ukraine and Russia both make and use multiple millions of these drones every year. 

Удари російських дронів по українському Leopard 1A5 [Січень 2025]

Seeing the lessons learned from Ukraine, the U.S. too is scaling up, with plans to significantly increase the number of FPV drones it makes.

For Israel, however, boosting the number of FPV drones for its troops is only part of the equation in this realm of warfare. The IDF has been highly criticized in Israel for not reacting more quickly to defend against these weapons, especially after encountering them on a much smaller scale in 2024 and watching what has taken place in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Exacerbating the problem for Israel is that Hezbollah has been relying heavily on fiber-optic guided FPV drones. Fiber optic cables mitigate the effect of electronic warfare efforts to jam radio signals as well as some of the limitations imposed by geographical features that can impede the line-of-sight radio connection between drone and operator.

Faced with a threat that is causing casualties and damaging equipment, Israel is beginning to roll out new countermeasures. As we have previously noted, these solutions range from putting netting on vehicles to improving armor defensive systems.

In our past reporting, we explained that the idea behind netting is that drones will get caught up in these nylon or mesh metal barriers and become disabled, or, in some cases, the nets will help keep the drones far enough from the occupants before exploding to keep them from being killed. 

As for protecting armor, active protection systems (APS) on its tanks and armored personnel carriers are being adapted to provide hard-kill counter-drone protection. These systems use sensors to detect incoming rocket-propelled grenades, missiles, and other similar threats, and fire projectiles to hit them before they strike the vehicle. Israel is a major pioneer in the APS space, with systems being deployed for decades, but just how soon it can upgrade existing systems, such as Iron Fist, for this application isn’t clear. Also, this doesn’t help many lighter vehicles that do not have APS capabilities.

Iron Fist APS | Active Protection System for Armored Vehicles

The IDF is also working on other systems. The include equipment to better detect the drones as well as the creation of interceptor drones specifically designed to counter FPV drones, according to Israel’s YNet media outlet.

Israel is far from alone in trying to both make more FPV drones and defend against them. The U.S., for instance, recently came under attack by FPV drones in Iraq and its services are training on ways to defend against them. Given Israel’s advanced military tech base that produces weapons used around the world, we will keep an eye on the solutions to the FPV scourge it develops.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com