By Jung Sung-ki
Staff reporter
The Ministry of National Defense Thursday called for a 6.9 percent increase in defense spending for 2011, including a budget to buy high-tech weapons systems over the next few years.
The ministry submitted the spending plan scaled at 31.6 trillion won ($25.9 billion) to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. It asked for 21.65 trillion won, a 5.8 percent increase from this year, for operational costs, including salaries for soldiers, and 9.95 trillion won, a 9.4 percent rise, for arms improvement projects.
A defense spending plan is subject to the approval of the National Assembly.
A key focus in arms improvement is to boost the country's surveillance and detection capabilities against North Korean provocations, such as a maritime infiltration attack, the ministry said.
To that end, about 845 billion won will be spent for acquiring airborne early warning aircraft and high/medium-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles, it said in a news release. About 26 billion won will be allotted to upgrade sonar systems on warships.
The military will also upgrade night vision equipment, radio communications systems, naval radars, rifles and rigid inflatable boats.
In an effort to bolster the country's border and coastal defenses, the military will begin deploying longer-range, higher-resolution thermal observation devices (TODs) next year to replace the current equipment that have a short-range and many blind spots, ministry officials said.
TOD is used as an observation tool at night by imaging infrared energy emitted from a body or a target.
The military plans to deploy the next-generation TOD after the sinking of the Navy ship Cheonan in March exposed problems with the existing thermal imaging sensors.
Following the tragic loss of the 1,200-ton frigate, military authorities disclosed TOD images recorded by a Marine unit nearby the site of incident, but the images failed to capture the scene of the explosion or the ship's split due to the limitations as a hand-operated mechanism as well as due to blind spots.
The new TOD is capable of detecting a target about 24 kilometers away. Existing TODs have a range of only 8 kilometers.