While no western media has picked it up because it is all rumors and tip offs by “insiders” Rumor is that EADS is offering in return for Typhoon buy for FX-3 is massive KF-X program offsets.

Money and technology transfer and help (same level partner as Indonesia) and in return they also get to sell (market really) a affordable (hopefully) 5th gen (if EADS has acceptable stealth technology) fighter as a alternative to the F-35 to the European market.

Although I can’t find the source the latest was that EADS was backing away because FX-3 did not have any guarantee that those offsets will help the Typhoon’s chances (Offsets such as ToT are there but massive KF-X help is not)
even though korea would be insane not to consider.

The problem is: They could still not!

So you are saying the powerpack problems mean that we can not design a MBT because that is the only problem we have at the moment.

well what he means is K1 is nothing more than an Abrams Jr. it relied heavily on GD’s input and advice.. just like how the T-50 is a Baby Viper.. Lockheed had a heavy role in it.

K2 on the other hand, not sure.

The word indigenous is really strange. Korea calls anything that contains tech that we jointly developed indigenous because we then have the technology inside. But most people will except weapons as indigenous the second time round when it is basically built on the same tech. So while off the shelf products won’t be indigenous Korea likes to call Jointly developed products the same as all Korean products.(Keep in mind mil fans do know and it is not some government lie that certain things are not “Indigenous”)

The debt did not cover the full extent of their deals though. It had more to do with finished items, T-80, BMP-3, etc.

Will here is some anecdotal evidence….take is as you will.

So there is a post on a military blog run by a famous analyst.

First off there is a link to the fact that our president is visiting turkey to sign off a nuclear deal.

And with that the guy thinks there will be talks on KF-X AH-X and other stuff. He asks how do we deal with Turkeys T-129 because personally he thinks the Apache is the best and he talks about if it is worth it to go T-129 and get closer to turkey vs the better apache.

Then the top comment is:

아무리 비싸고 성능이 뛰어난 공격헬기라고 하더라도
한국의 상황에서는 별로 효율적이지 않습니다.

터키가 야심차게 개발한 T-129를 한국이 사줘서
자존심을 좀 세워줄 필요가 있습니다.

K-9, K-2 모두 터키가 엄청난 로열티 주고 기술을 사지 않았습니까?
우리가 뭔가 줘야 합니다.

한국은 T-50도 수출해야 하고, KFX는 공동개발해야 하는데
터키로 부터 아무것도 수입하지 않고서 같이 잘해보자고 하는 것은 정말 아닙니다.

No matter how expensive/good attack helicopter (apache) it is it is not good for korea’s (political) situation.

There is a need for korea to buy the T-129 that Turkey ambitiously developed
to boot confidence.

Didn’t they give massive royalties and buy K-2 K-9 (and KT-1) technology? We have to give something (too).

Korea needs to export the T-50 (to turkey) and jointly develop KFX but not importing anything from Turkey and asking them to do this together (co-operate) is really not (the way).

Please do not be angry with me, but the article named “Sukhoi T-50 / PAK FA – official patent analysis” is on a “knowledge level” of a teenage boy, not very informative at all. Moreover, I was surprised by the number of weird comments inside the article, e.g. “These rotary parts shade the main engine inlets but there are auxiliary inlets at the sidewalls of the inlet tunnels where air can flow in avoiding restrictions.” 😮

What is strange? The part rotates and blocks the air from going into the intakes but there are holes in the side of the intakes where air can go in instead and avoiding the part.

Russia pulls out of Korea fighter project

Saab is also thinking about it.

So why did they look to Russia for help with SAMs?

And Israel for anything (Mainly Radars electronics and missiles)