S. Korea’s Multibillion-Dollar KFX Project in Danger of Going Awry
S. Korea’s Multibillion-Dollar KFX Project in Danger of Going Awry
  • By Oh Hae-young (info@koreaittimes.com)
  • 승인 2015.09.30 17:44
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The Blue House (or Cheong Wa Dae) has been looking into the 18-trillion-won Korean Fighter Experimental (KFX) project, a fighter procurement project which has hit a huge stumbling block following the US’s refusal to allow transfer of core technologies to S. Korea.

The government’s shoddy management and the South Korean military’s preference for US-made weapons are viewed as the underlying causes of the KFX project making little progress. “Among bidders for the KFX project, Europe’s EADS (currently Airbus) is willing to make direct investment and transfer technology while Lockheed Martin and Boeing remain passive amid expectations that the US government would not give the go-ahead to them,” think-tank Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) wrote in a report, released in 2012.

The report did predict that if S. Korea opted for US aerospace and defense giant Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), S. Korea would find it hard to get the KFX project off the ground.

However, in November 2013, the Joint Chiefs of Staff revised the Korean military’s ROC (Required Operational Capability) in favor of the F-35 flaunting stealth features, saying that “Next-generation fighters should be capable of striking targets after infiltrating enemy lines by stealth in order to steel the nation for North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats.” In the process, 15 former Air Force Chiefs of Staff send the Blue House and the defense ministry  letters calling for selecting stealth warplanes as next-generation fighter jets for the nation.

The F-35’s stealth technology, however, is capable of delaying radar detection of aircraft, not avoiding it completely. Nevertheless, the Korean military has thus far underscored the importance of the US- S. Korea joint defense system and interoperability with other US-made weapons.

As a matter of fact, the S. Korean Air Force has Boeing’s F15K and the E737 airborne early warning and control aircraft as its major fighter aircraft. Many of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA)’s ongoing large-scale air defense projects have something to do with Lockheed Martin, including procurement of 40 F-35 fighter jets, the development of the KFX, upgrading the nation’s aging fleet of 134 KF-16 fighter jets and procurement of 12 maritime patrol aircraft (MPA).

“S. Korea has missed the golden opportunity to get its hands on European technologies in the process of selecting the next generation of fighter jets. Since it is inevitable to change the KFX project’s business strategy, someone should be held accountable for leading the KFX project in the wrong direction,” said a military expert.

Meanwhile, Korean aircraft manufacturer Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) has yet to sign a formal contract with military authorities since it was chosen the preferred bidder in March. The signing of a formal contract, initially scheduled for May, was postponed to September. It hasn’t happened since then.


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