Seoul to ditch US missile purchase

Taurus

Seoul is considering eliminating a U.S. defense giant from its possible bidders for the purchase of 177 long-range air-to-surface cruise missiles due to Washington’s continued delay in issuing an export license, multiple sources said Tuesday.

Korea has repeatedly expressed interest in the purchase of the Lockheed Martin’s the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs) since April 2008, but the United States has yet to issue a letter of offer and acceptance (LOA).

An industry source said Korean defense officials pressured U.S. counterparts for the early approval of the arms sales during their meeting in Washington on Nov 15, but it was to no avail.

“We are ready to ditch our plan to negotiate with the United States for the possible purchase of JASSMs, if Germany-based Taurus Systems GmbH (TSG) offers its Taurus air-to-ground missiles at an attractive price,” a senior military official said.

He underlined that officials from the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) have been engaging in negotiations with TSG over the cost and technology transfer regarding the sales of the Taurus.

Industry insiders speculate that the U.S. Congress and Department of Defense is deliberately postponing the sales of its cutting-edge military products, such as JASSMS and RQ-4 Global Hawks unmanned spy planes, to use them as leverage to sell fighter jets.

Currently, Korea is seeking to buy 60 advanced multirole fighter jets from one of the three bidders — Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the two U.S. defense contractors’ rival European Aeronautic Defense and Space (EADS).

“It appears the U.S. wants to keep the negotiation power over Korea’s fighter jet acquisition project worth more than 8 trillion won by holding back the sales of strategic weapons,” an industry official said.

He maintained that DAPA hinted the possibility of dropping its purchase plan for JASSMs and asked the TSG representative over the feasibility of acquiring 200 German-made the fire-and-forget missiles at a unit price of 1.7 billion won.

The industry source said TSG is willing to negotiate with DAPA over a price cut of the Taurus, which a DAPA official said was offered at 3.6 billion won when Seoul requested quotations in 2009.

“TSG can offer Taurus at 2.5 billion won or lower, a very attractive price to Korea, and deliver them in eight to 12 months upon the signing of the sales agreement,” he said.

JASSM has an operation range of 370 kilometers and a warhead of 450 kilograms, whereas Taurus is capable of flying more than 500 kilometers with a warhead of 500 kilograms.

He said Seoul will gain more from purchasing Taurus over JASSM due to its longer range, heavier-war head features as well as TSG’s willingness to offer an extensive technology transfer.

“TSG has expressed its willingness to offer more than 40 days of training in the advance technology used in Taurus and addition one year of system engineering work for the definition of the next generation long range land to land missile system,” he said.

The official noted that the engineering work will be performed in Korea in a joint system engineering team with expert members from Taurus and Korea government and industry officials. <The Korea Times/Lee Tae-hoon>