This study applies input-output analysis to examine the structural impact and economic ripple effects of the marine unmanned system industry on the domestic economy. The marine unmanned system industry is a convergent sector that integrates platform t...
This study applies input-output analysis to examine the structural impact and economic ripple effects of the marine unmanned system industry on the domestic economy. The marine unmanned system industry is a convergent sector that integrates platform technologies such as Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) and Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) with control, communication, and payload systems, demonstrating strong linkages with shipbuilding, electronics, information and communication technology, and software industries. However, since this industry is not currently defined as an independent sector within the industrial structure, this study reconstructs the analysis framework by reclassifying basic sectors of the input-output table and extracting industry groups related to marine unmanned systems.
The analysis reveals that the production inducement coefficient of the marine unmanned system industry is 1.5534, confirming that production growth in this sector triggers cascading additional production across other industries, demonstrating high expandability. The value-added inducement coefficient stands at 0.6666, indicating that the marine unmanned system industry possesses substantial economic value creation capacity as a technology-intensive sector. Furthermore, the employment inducement coefficient is analyzed at 6.2626 persons per billion won, suggesting that industrial growth will generate significant employment effects centered on specialized technical personnel. The forward-backward linkage effect analysis also shows that the marine unmanned system industry exhibits relatively high forward linkage effects, confirming that industrial expansion accompanies demand expansion for other industries.
This study contributes academically and policy-wise by quantitatively demonstrating the economic significance of the marine unmanned system industry. In particular, it can serve as foundational data for formulating future industrial development strategies, including industrial structure transformation, expansion of dual-use technologies, technology development support, and demonstration infrastructure construction. Future research requires more sophisticated industrial analysis, including life cycle cost analysis, operational efficiency evaluation, and supply chain value analysis.