Last week, President Park Geun-hye gave the Defense Acquisition Program Administration the go-ahead for its plan to locally develop four key technologies for next-generation jet fighters. Yet before the agency places orders on local defense contractors, the government needs to address burning questions about the plan’s feasibility.
DAPA is in charge of the KF-X project, an 18-trillion-won ($15.9 billion) program to produce 120 fifth-generation combat jets by 2025. But the project’s future was clouded following Washington’s refusal in April to authorize the export of four of the 25 technologies that U.S. defense company Lockheed Martin offered to transfer to Korea.
To get out of the quandary, the defense procurement agency examined its options and concluded that the four technologies — the active electronically scanned array radar, infrared search and track, an electronics optics targeting pod and radio frequency jammer — could be developed locally.
In a briefing to Park on Oct. 27, DAPA explained its plan to develop the four technologies through cooperation with local research institutes and defense contractors.
Park approved DAPA’s scheme swiftly as if she had no doubt about its feasibility. She told the agency’s head to ensure that the KF-X project could be successfully completed within the planned time frame.
Yet Park’s quick approval left many to wonder why the government had been so desperate to obtain the four technologies from the U.S. if they could be developed locally.
Only last month, Defense Minister Han Min-koo requested the export licenses when he met his U.S. counterpart in Washington. The minister was criticized for harming the national prestige with such begging.
Skepticism about DAPA’s plan prompted Rep. Chung Doo-un of the ruling Saenuri Party, who heads the National Defense Committee of the National Assembly, to publicly call for a comprehensive review of the entire KF-X project.
Chung dismissed the agency’s scheme as unrealistic, citing the assessments of domestic defense technology capabilities by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Evaluation and Planning and the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses.
KISTEP, for instance, said Korea has secured only 14 percent of the technologies needed to develop the AESA radar. This assessment was one of the factors that led the government to give up on the option of going it alone in developing the sophisticated jet fighters in the first place.
DAPA needs to explain how Korea can develop the jet fighters within 10 years despite its total lack of experience in this area. Until it comes up with a convincing explanation, the KF-X project needs to be put on hold.
