Hidden among hills, mostly in tunnels, hundreds of North Korean heavy artillery pieces stand ready to rain thousands of shells a minute onto Seoul. For decades, the big guns have been the biggest threat that South Korea has had to face. More recently a new one has become more prominent in the South’s strategic calculations: an uncertain number of nuclear warheads of uncertain performance and reliability, potentially fitted to ballistic missiles fired from heavily protected sites in the far north of the Korean Peninsula.
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Pressed to nominate a priority, one program official says that an excellent strike capability would be valued more highly than an excellent air-to-air capability. Rapidly knocking out those guns, and ranging far into North Korea to hit ballistic missile launchers, nuclear facilities and command nodes would be critically important if war came.
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That is one reason the stealthy F-35 is a strong contender for the order. But the repeated delays to the Joint Strike Fighter program are strengthening the hands of the F-35’s competitors.
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F-X Phase 3 currently requires a first delivery in 2016, with initial operational capability in 2018, says air force Col. Taek-Hwan Song, who addressed a seminar on the program in Seoul last month held by the Korea Defense and Security Forum. The target dates should be easy for Boeing and Eurofighter to meet, but maybe not for Lockheed Martin.
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A further complication is the demand that the winning bidder transfer technology to help South Korea to develop its proposed KF-X fighter. This requirement is now backed by the air force, which previously looked askance at the costly ambitions of the technologists in the defense ministry.
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On this point Eurofighter, represented in South Korea by EADS, has a clear advantage over its U.S. competitors, since it is not subject to Washington’s strict rules on technology transfer. Eurofighter proposes that the Typhoon become the basis of KF-X, diminishing risk for the ambitious but still insufficiently experienced local industry.
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I thought this might make an interesting discussion. So which is it? Eurofighter Typhoon, F-15SE or F-35 for South Korea?
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June 11, 2011 at 5:12 pm