Griffon model aircraft pilots Dan Spinks, left, and Mike Grimm carry a target model from the beach during Sea Strike. (Seth Robson / Stars and Stripes)

CHULMAE RANGE, South Korea — The days are numbered for the SU-25 Frog Foot, one of the smallest aircraft the U.S. Army uses in South Korea.

The Frog Foot is a model aircraft the Army uses to test Air Defense Artillery systems. But the company that builds and operates the Frog Foot, Griffon Aerospace, plans to replace it with its new unmanned aerial vehicle, the Outlaw, Griffon employees said during a recent air-defense exercise.

While the Frog Foot resembles a 1/5 scale model of a Russian MiG-23 jet fighter, the Outlaw looks more like the Predator, an unmanned aerial vehicle used by the U.S. Army.

Last week, dozens of Frog Foots were blasted out of the air at Chulmae Range, south of Seoul, by soldiers from 5th Battalion, 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, using Stinger missiles.

By Tuesday, with the missile shoot still in progress, only a few Frog Foots were left and Griffon employees were preparing to unpack the first Outlaws from their crates on the beachfront. One of the civilian model aircraft pilots, Mike Grimm, said the new aircraft would be used both as a target and as an unmanned aerial vehicle.

“It looks like a Predator. It is ... a lot faster” than the Frog Foots, said Grimm, who expects to transition into unmanned aerial vehicle work with the fielding of the Outlaw.

In profile, the Outlaw’s cigar-shaped fuselage, straight, narrow wings and thin stabilizers make the craft look like a kid’s stick-figure drawing of an airplane. But the drone is low-cost, enjoys stealth characteristics and is designed to support multiple mission roles, according to the Griffon Web site, www.griffon-aerospace.com/aeroveh.htm.

The baseline version flies at up to 184 mph; the jet-powered version cruises at 288 mph. The vehicle, Griffon said, can work with existing servos and Global Positioning System autopilots and avionics and a range of payloads and sensors.

The company now is developing a version of the Outlaw for the Army to use as targets and an expendable version for Special Operations missions. Griffon also has provided performance estimates to the Navy for a long endurance version, the Web site states.

But the model aircraft pilots said they would miss the older Frog Foot.

“We are sorry to see them go because they are simplistic compared to the new ones,” Grimm said.

Nearby, another model aircraft pilot, Dan Spinks, put a Frog Foot through its paces, maneuvering deftly over the waves while the 5-5 soldiers prepared to blast his plane out of the sky. After his aircraft was completely destroyed by a Stinger missile, Spinks was philosophical.

“You should see it through the binoculars. One of them hit the back end and must have hit the fuel tank, because it blew it to smithereens. Every piece of the plane blew up into tiny bits. There were no recoverable parts anywhere,” he said.

Many model aircraft hobbyists might love to have a job flying targets for the U.S. Army, but they might not realize how hard the job is, he said.

“They cannot realize the stress induced when you travel 13 hours on an airplane to get to work,” he said, referring to the long flight from the States to participate in Sea Strike.

And flying the model planes also can be stressful, he said.

“You are looking into the sun all day, so it is kind of hard on your eyeballs,” he said.

Model aircraft pilots prefer to fly their own model planes, Spinks said.

“Here we are under a mandate here to fly a certain pattern, but when we have our own planes on our own time, then we are more likely to do aerobatic maneuvers,” he said.

Electric model aircraft, instead of gas-powered, are the way of the future, said Spinks, whose own toy plane is a replica P-51D Mustang that can fly for half an hour before he has to change batteries.

“Eventually I see the world going electric. We will have the technology maybe by the time we are old men,” he said.

Some model aircraft pilots fly full-sized planes as well, but Spinks said he prefers to stick to small ones.

“If it crashes, I don’t get hurt,” he said.

Griffon model aircraft pilots Dan Spinks, left, and Mike Grimm carry a target model from the beach during Sea Strike. (Seth Robson / Stars and Stripes)

Griffon Aerospace employee Dan Spinks pilots a model aircraft during the annual Sea Strike exercise in South Korea. (Seth Robson / Stars and Stripes)