South Korea’s defense acquisition agency came under fire again Tuesday upon concerns that their plans to secure all technologies from the U.S. this month to develop an indigenous fighter jet may not be feasible on time.
The Defense Acquisition Program Administration had said that Washington would give its approval for the export of 21 technologies from Lockheed Martin by early November, and that Washington should do so under a bilateral agreement.
But the U.S. requested recently that the two sides hold consultations over the specific details of hundreds of sub-technologies that form the 21 technologies, a process that observers say may take several months.
Lockheed Martin agreed to hand over the technologies to Korea on condition of the U.S. State Department’s endorsement, after it won a 7.3 trillion won ($6.33 billion) contract from Seoul last year to deliver 40 F-35s from 2018 through 2021.
A DAPA official told The Korea Herald that it set early November not as a deadline, but a “target date.”
“We have been striving to secure the technologies by November, which is a target date,” he said on condition of anonymity. “We held consultations with related U.S. officials last week in Seoul, and we will hold another round of talks over the technology transfer next week in the U.S.”
Observers expect DAPA to be able to receive all technologies sometime in the first half of 2016. A delay in the technology transfer is expected to cause yet another delay in the implementation of the fighter development project, called KF-X.
The KF-X, which has already been a decade behind schedule due to feasibility and budgetary issues, is the country’s largest-ever defense project to domestically develop a fighter by 2025 to replace the aging fleet of F4 and F5 fighters.
With a budget of 8.5 trillion won, Seoul plans to develop the fighter and spend an additional 10 trillion won to produce 120 KF-X fighters by 2032.
With constant delays in the project, the Air Force has been concerned about a possible airpower vacuum.
Currently, the South has some 420 fighters, with some officials saying the Air Force has already begun suffering from the shortage of warplanes. The North is said to possess some 820 warplanes, though their planes are mostly based on old platforms.
By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)
