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US to transfer 21 jet technologies to Korea
By Jun Ji-hye
The U.S. government has approved the transfer of 21 jet technologies used in Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter to Korea, setting the stage to kick-start the stalled KF-X project to develop locally produced fighter jets.
The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said Wednesday that the U.S. agreed on transferring the 21 technologies in a “large frame” on Nov. 30 when a negotiating team was in Washington.
A DAPA official said the two sides will continue to hold negotiations in the future to list in detail the technologies that Korea needs to receive, as hundreds of technical items are part of the 21.
The 8.5 trillion won KF-X project aims to build fighter jets by 2025 to replace the Air Force’s aging fleet of F-4s and F-5s.
“We anticipate the agreement with the U.S. will enable the KF-X project to begin within this year,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The official refused to elaborate on which technologies Korea will receive first.
The U.S. government’s issuance of an export license regarding the 21 including the flight control system came after inspections by the Department of Defense and State Department at the request of the Korean government.
The State Department issued a license to Lockheed Martin, the F-35 manufacturer, the party that will actually hand over technologies to Korea.
DAPA held negotiations with Lockheed officials in Seoul from Nov. 18 to 20, and then the government’s negotiating team, including officials from DAPA, the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, visited Washington for extended talks held from Dec. 1 to 3.
The official said that the KF-X project is a huge, long-term program, so it was hard to immediately determine which technologies were necessary.
“There are technologies necessary to the initial, middle and final stages of the project,” he said. “We will receive those necessary to the initial stage first as it is now clear how such technologies will be used. We then will carry out additional negotiations in between to determine which ones are necessary in the future.”
He cited an example of the nation’s development of the T-50 supersonic trainer jet in 2001 with technical assistance from the U.S. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.
“At the time, negotiations about the issuance of export licenses took place 11 times after the first one was issued,” he said.
The latest agreement between Seoul and Washington appeared, to some extent, to ease mounting skepticism regarding the project.
A transfer of a total of 25 technologies was included in an offset deal with Lockheed Martin in return for Korea’s purchase of 40 F-35s, signed in September last year.
However, the U.S. government refused in April to allow Lockheed to hand over four core technologies, including the active electronically scanned array radar, to Korea for security reasons.
Amid growing skepticism about the feasibility of the KF-X program at the time, DAPA had said that the U.S. government would approve the transfer of another 21 technologies in November.
Delayed negotiations regarding the transfer even led to calls for restarting the KF-X program from square one and cancelling the F-35 deal, if necessary.
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