The Republic of Korea sits at a geographically intriguing point.
To the north, it borders North Korea, and on three sides, it borders the sea. To the west lies China, the world’s leading manufacturing power and North Korea’s patron state. Moving further north, Russia has become North Korea’s blood-sworn ally since 2022. The total border length that the Republic of Korea must guard, surrounded by actual enemies and allies, is approximately 2,640 km, exceeding the 2,550 km border between NATO member states and Russia.
Due to these circumstances, Korea differs significantly from most of the liberal democratic nations in the following key aspects. First, all adult males must perform mandatory military service after turning 19. Second, although Korea is connected to the continent, its island-like position necessitates a domestic production system to prepare for potential maritime blockades, with particularly concrete stockpiling plans for natural resources. Third, despite the end of the Cold War and the establishment of an international peace posture, South Korea has always had a fixed enemy in North Korea, so the furnaces of its weapons factories have never been extinguished.
South Korea currently has a reserve force of approximately 3 million personnel, the largest among Western-oriented liberal democracies. It is armed with a vast quantity of ground weapon platforms that, as of now, surpass the entire European liberal arsenal. Major defense companies such as Hanwha, Hyundai Rotem, KAI, and LIG Nex1 are serving as the liberal arsenal, supplying weapons amid the recent intensification of international conflicts.
Paradoxically, South Korea, with its abundant reserve power, particularly its officer corps, and its massive defense contractors that constantly have the state as their market, has been a challenging environment for defense startups to grow.
However, the shift, like the war in Ukraine since 2022, is affecting regions as far east as the Far East. Early challengers are entering the market to fill the void that large defense contractors, with their relatively complex decision-making systems and slow pivots, cannot.
Newtype Industries, featured in this article, is a Korean defense startup specializing in national defense.
The Origin of “Newtype”
‘Newtype’ refers to a new breed of humanity evolved through war within the world of the anime ‘Gundam’, a term popularized in Japanese anime. These individuals are superior in brain capacity to humanity as a whole, and they can pilot new mobile suits immediately upon boarding. Simultaneously, their decentralized thinking allows them to operate multiple mobile suits simultaneously as “funnels,” enabling simultaneous combat against overwhelming enemy forces.
Why was this name chosen? Founder and CEO of Newtype Industries, Joe Cho, explains:
“Human individuals have limitations in their ability to think. We must clearly recognize this fact. However, with the aid of supportive systems, collective thinking is possible, as in the Newtypes of the anime. Newtype Industries was founded to accelerate the speed of collective human decision-making within the war domain.”
Newtype Industries’ Journey to Startup
Joe is a former Republic of Korea Army officer. He majored in military history at the Republic of Korea (ROK) Military Academy and, fascinated by the role of artillery, he joined the artillery branch. Then, in his first year of service, a major incident occurred in Korea. On November 23rd of 2010, North Korea launched its first direct artillery attack on South Korean territory since the armistice of the Korean War. The targeted area was Yeonpyeong Island, closer to Pyongyang than to Seoul.
“Although a full-scale military response operation against North Korea was immediately launched, it was confirmed that the ROK military’s Kill Chain was not functioning properly. As an officer responsible for responding to North Korea, it was a moment of shame. During my subsequent 12 years of military service, I struggled with how to bridge the tactical gap between the sensors and firepower assets needed to make the Kill Chain work effectively.”
As a founding member of the ROK-US Combined Division established in 2015, working alongside US Forces in Korea, Joe became increasingly convinced that existing systems could not resolve the issues at hand. He realized that comprehensive reform was needed, not merely the maximization of existing capabilities.
“The ROK-US combined training exercises provided a valuable opportunity for the US military at the time to experience traditional large-scale warfare. Despite having over 100 personnel in the intelligence department and nearly 80 in the firepower department, it was notable that target processing was not being handled properly.
The MDL (Military Demarcation Line) presents an extremely challenging environment where mutual attacks occur between large-scale artillery assets, including those from both North and South Korea, totaling over 10,000 pieces. It became quite clear that countering such high-intensity firepower in this environment was impossible, relying solely on human judgment. The human concentration span, required to respond to high-intensity counter-fire systematically, was only about five minutes.”
After completing 12 years of military service in December 2022 and deciding to leave the military, Joe gained experience handling civilian information and communications equipment at Myeongshin Information & Telecommunication. The company specializes in 4G/LTE communication infrastructure construction, and equipment handling and assembly.
For Joe, this period was invaluable, as it allowed him to recognize the superiority of commercial information and communication equipment over military counterparts and to identify the limitations of existing communication systems. Having sketched out a defense AI solution capable of addressing these limitations within existing communication channels, Joe then began persuading Myeongshin Information & Telecommunication’s leadership of the necessity of establishing a defense venture in 2023.
Following the war in Ukraine, the need for full-scale rearmament was discussed, and startups are filling the gap left by traditional defense companies in Europe. By contrast, South Korea had a well-established weapons procurement system, which made it difficult to persuade others to start a defense startup. Concerned that the business might stumble midway, “Newtype Industries” was launched in 2024 as an internal venture within Myeongsin Information & Telecommunications to reduce risk.
Features of “Barbara”, Newtype Industries’ First Solution
What strikes me when talking with Joe is his approach to problems. This is evident from the very start, like naming Newtype Industries’ first AI solution “Barbara.” His dream of continuing to contribute to the artillery branch even after his military days is embedded in that name.
“Barbara is a saint revered by artillery units worldwide. She symbolizes lightning and fire, and, though added considerably later, gunpowder.”
The principle behind the “Barbara” solution is straightforward. By integrating Speech-to-Text (SST) with AI solutions, it visualizes data aggregated from human sensors on the fire control system’s display, enabling the necessary firepower to be directed to the required location and time, in the required amount.
In artillery, fire guidance fundamentally relies on forward observers directing fire. While specific reporting formats must be followed for such fire guidance, various challenges must be considered on the battlefield. The “Barbara” solution was developed to overcome these challenges.
“Due to enemy jamming, reduced communication sensitivity may sometimes make it difficult to hear the personnel reporting. Considering that the sensors are human, differences in individual proficiency may also cause reporting sequences to deviate from the standard format. Considering that personnel assigning firepower to frontline units from the rear are human, these factors create friction points. However, Barbara detects voice data more sensitively than humans and converts it into vector data suitable for fire guidance. Furthermore, it simplifies the process by identifying and resolving overlapping targets.”
Compared with personnel in the target processing department of a traditional military fire control center, the ‘Barbara’ solution demonstrated superior data processing performance in experiments. Unlike humans, the AI solution maintained consistent processing speed without loss of concentration, even when performing repetitive tasks.
“In numerical terms, experimental results confirm that it is approximately 850 times more efficient compared to existing target processing procedures that rely on human teams. While this was impossible for teams composed of individual humans, the introduction of AI solutions has enabled humans to achieve processing speeds similar to those of Newtypes.”
But why did Newtype Industries focus on artillery fire guidance procedures relying on voice data collected from human sensors in the modern battlefield, where strikes using loitering munitions dependent on video data collected by drones have become routine?
“Human voice data is the only unstructured data that requires digital conversion. All other data collected from sensors is already digitized, requiring no additional processing for system integration. We focused on artillery fire guidance procedures because artillery is the most common form of firepower currently available to the South Korean military. We started by concentrating on the most challenging technical tasks and the fundamental means that could be utilized immediately.”
(Photo Credit: Gemini Generated Image)
War Waged by People with Minds
If the Russo-Ukrainian war has shown the world anything, it is that war is conducted by humans. John Boyd, a U.S. Air Force pilot and military strategist, once said:
“War is not waged by machines but by people, and people use their minds. Therefore, in war, people, ideas, and hardware are important in that order.”
The Ukrainian military has fought on equal terms against the overwhelmingly superior Russian forces for four years now. While technological and systemic innovations have played a role, it is the will of the Ukrainian people that has enabled this. People with minds wage war.
To fully grasp Joe’s ideas, it is necessary to understand John Boyd’s theory, known as the “OODA (Observe – Orient – Decide – Act) Loop. Sensors, represented by drones on the modern battlefield, handle the Observe function within this process. Strike capabilities, exemplified by loitering munitions, handle the Act phase. However, judging the situation (Orient) and making decisions (Decide) will remain within the human domain, both now and in the future.
“AI is not yet a silver bullet applicable to every situation. Sensor-observed results can be directly linked to firepower guidance. However, military actions based solely on observation and reaction may preserve the status quo, but they cannot lead to victory. This is because it is not possible to prevent the expenditure of unnecessary resources. For division-level operations to be executed, we need more than just the sum of company-level engagements. And I believe that such intuition is still possessed only by humans. That is why we still need AI solutions as an assistant tool for assessing the situation and making decisions.”
Newtype Industries strives to become a company that provides solutions for winning wars by optimizing diverse solutions for the military domain.
“I never tell engineers to understand the war, because pivoting the way they think will require them to take on a great deal of risk. But I discuss with them when I believe that pivoting their technology is needed to contribute to the war effort. We face a common, significant challenge. That is why I am seeking teams to tackle this challenge together—whether within Korea or beyond.”