South Korea is turning increasingly to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) as declining troop numbers create a growing need for robotic military capabilities, according to GlobalData. Active-duty personnel have dropped to roughly 450,000 in 2025 from about 560,000 in 2019, encouraging Seoul to deploy autonomous and remotely operated platforms for manpower-intensive missions. GlobalData forecasts around $140 million in South Korean ground robotics procurement by 2036, with UGVs likely to be used for logistics, reconnaissance and surveillance, mine-clearing operations, and other battlefield support tasks.
