By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
South Korea's attack helicopter acquisition plan has had a fresh twist, as military authorities here appear to give second thoughts about the purchase of refurbished U.S. Apache helicopters and instead give an idea of building indigenous attack helicopters the benefit of the doubt.
The government was positively considering buying about 36 used Apaches, dubbed MIMEX, and upgrading them to newer ones for deployment after 2012 under the AH-X program.
The Ministry of National Defense, however, abruptly halted a months-long feasibility study on the AH-X heavy attack helicopter procurement effort in May and ordered the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) to conduct a fresh study by the year's end.
The ministry also asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Army to readjust the Korea Attack Helicopter (KAH)'s operational requirements, which had originally called for a medium or light attack helicopter.
Procurement officials and defense experts remain cautious about the KAH plan, citing technological difficulties and uncertain cost effectiveness.
Proponents for the KAH initiative, on the other hand, argue that developing a homegrown attack helicopter would help reduce logistics support problems and boost the country's defense industry by creating more jobs in the long-term.
The KAH program calls for building about 270 attack helicopters with the help of foreign manufacturers to replace the Army's older fleet of 500MD TOW and AH-1S helicopters. The program has been estimated by analysts here and abroad to cost up to 10 trillion won ($8 billion) or more.
About half of the Army's 500MD TOW helicopters will reach their life span of 30 years by 2013, and AH-1S helicopters have also been operated for more than 16 years.
DAPA spokesman Kim Young-san said his agency was carrying out a final, comprehensive feasibility study on the attack helicopter plans in a balanced manner, rejecting the notion that the KAH would be favored eventually.
``The buy of used Apaches is an option still on the table, along with the KAH and other options,'' Kim told The Korea Times Monday. ``A final decision will be made as early as next February, or by July or August next year after an economic feasibility study by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.''
Seoul's alleged changed stance on the buy of used Apache helicopters emerged apparently after some local newspapers reported about a ``discord'' between the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) and the U.S. Army's Apache program team.
Reports said the DAPA had not been satisfied with conditions offered by the U.S. team during a preliminary information-sharing process earlier this year.
Some newspapers said the U.S. side had made an ``excessive'' demand that the U.S. Apache team could not guarantee long-time logistics support for South Korea, so Seoul should make a bulk purchases of enough spare parts to last 30 years.
The U.S. team was also negative about integrating the Korean Army's tactical joint tactical data link and domestic U/VHF FM radio systems into the Apache helicopter, according to reports.
The U.S. team rebukes the ``malignant'' reports, which it argues has been propagandized by Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), South Korea's only aircraft maker seeking to develop the KAH, following the successful development of the Korea Utility Helicopter (KUH) in partnership with Eurocopter.
``While it is true that the United States stated that it would not guarantee that the (Apache) Block I or Block II aircraft could fulfill the Republic of Korea 30 year endurance life requirement, that does not mean that the aircraft and its subsystems could not be sustained,'' Col. Shanet Openshaw, head of the U.S. Army's Apace Project Manager Office said.
He made the remarks in a memorandum delivered to the DAPA on Aug. 6 through the Joint U.S. Military Affairs Group-Korea in Seoul.
``If we had been asked to provide the same guarantee for the Block III aircraft now under development, the response would have been the same,'' he said. ``In fact, any manufacturer of a technologically advanced system that would commit to this requirement is being disingenuous.''
The recommendation to procure sufficient spare parts to sustain the aircraft based on the operational requirements was by no means a demand by the U.S. government that South Korea must procure 30 years of spares up front to guarantee the endurance life requirement, the U.S. officer stressed in the letter exclusively obtained by The Korea Times.
Logistics support by the United States usually focuses on three to five years after delivery, but under an additional contract on spare parts and maintenance, South Korea could get far longer support regarding spare parts, he added.
Regarding the data link integration, he said his team recommended South Korea do that work when it wants to upgrade the aircraft to the newest Block III standard in order to prevent a delay in fielding the capability by developing and testing related systems for older versions -- Block I/II.
According to questions-and-answers documents exchanged between the DAPA and the U.S. Apache Program Manager Office earlier this year, the U.S. Army has 262 AH-64D Apache Block I models, modified from the AH-64A between 1996 and 2002. The AH-64A aircraft were manufactured between 1984 and 1994.
The U.S. Army plans to upgrade the 262 Block I aircraft to the Block III in stages, and of them, 53 units having older fuselages will be initially be upgraded to the Block III from 2011, the documents say.
The service plans to operate other Block I models by 2017 and Block IIs, by 2025, respectively.
If South Korea wants to buy Block I aircraft ``reset'' with newer avionics and weapons systems, the first delivery could be made by June 2012, while the Block III could arrive in South Korea as early as 2014, according to them.
Assuming the delivery in 2012, a Block I will be approximately $16.2 million, while a 2014 delivery could push the cost to about $17 million, the documents note.
Per-unit price of the Block II will be between $19 and $20 million on the basis of an upgrade kit estimated to cost about $2.7 million.
A Block III unit equipped with a fire-control radar system will be $32.5 million, the office clarified. The office added the total cost per year for Korea to operate 36 Apaches, with 162 yearly hours per aircraft, would be about $25 million, refuting a recent assessment, made by the state-funded Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, of some $64 million.
The AH-64D Apache Longbow is an all-weather, day-night military attack helicopter. Its armament includes a 30mm M230 Chain Gun, AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles, AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and Hydra 70 laser-guided rockets.
With an emphasis on building a ``self-reliant'' defense posture in line with the 2012 transition of wartime operational control of Korean troops from the U.S. military to Korean commanders, the previous Roh Moo-hyun administration accelerated efforts to develop and produce indigenous KAHs.
KAI wants to convert the KUH Surion utility helicopter into a helicopter gunship by arming it with weapons and more advanced avionics systems.
Despite the consensus view that developing an indigenous attack helicopter would be in a right direction, skepticism has been high about the KAH.
A defense researcher at a private defense think tank, which was in charge of the aborted AH-X feasibility study, reiterated the difficulties in developing an attack helicopter, citing a long gestation period and budgetary problems.
``There is no country, even if it has an outstanding helicopter building infrastructure, technology and experience as well as related experts, that has succeeded in developing an attack helicopter within 10 years,'' the researcher said on condition of anonymity.
It took more than nine years in general to see the first flight after development and an average of 21 years to have them enter service initially, he said.
The DAPA gave an assessment earlier that the KAH program would cost between $5 billion and $10 billion.