South Korea’s Navy and the Agency for Defense Development saw two domestically developed attack drones crash into the sea seconds after launch from the amphibious assault ship ROKS Marado during the system’s first naval trial off Busan. The test was intended to confirm shipborne launch performance and the drones’ ability to track and strike an unmanned target vessel about 2 km away, but both launches failed before the demonstration could proceed.
The first drone fell into the water about two seconds after launch, and the second crashed after only a few more seconds. The Navy aborted the trial after the initial failure, ending a programme that had previously completed around 30 successful land-based tests. ADD began analysing the incident and pointed to a possible launch-system alignment problem rather than an issue with the drone itself, though the exact root cause remained under investigation.