Thursday, November 21, 2013

F-35: The latest on South Korea

Here's a pretty succinct summary:
The Joint Chiefs of Staff in South Korea will announce what the country is looking for in its $7.8B fighter jet tender tomorrow. 

What the watch: The focus will be on the extent to which the military stresses the need to for stealth capabilities.

As Bloomberg notes, it isn't exactly a secret that the country wants Lockheed Martin's F-35, but procuring 60 of the fifth generation aircraft would require an extra investment of more than ₩2T.

Boeing (BA) and EADS (EADSF) are hoping for a split order.
I think that pretty much says it all.  We should be hearing something over the next few days.

Graff

2 comments:

  1. Sure, $123 million is way below the actual cost of this great pretender, and surely wasn't enough, but I wonder how adding two trillion won bringing it to $155 million per plane would be enough. That's way below what the US is currently paying according to the budget. The US budgeted $176 million per unit for the F-35A this fiscal year. The sale would be under FMS which means ROK can't legally pay less than the US cost of manufacture.

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    1. Well gee, it's not like production is ramping up or anything. I mean implying that increased production would lower the cost is silly, you are obviously correct in your assertion that the F-35 will forever be stuck at LRIP costs.

      I've heard of bending the facts but this is getting out of hand.

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