{"id":2203,"date":"2013-09-25T11:53:24","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T17:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2013-09-25T11:53:24","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T17:53:24","slug":"south-korea-rejects-boeing-says-f-15-not-good-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/south-korea-rejects-boeing-says-f-15-not-good-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea rejects Boeing, says F-15 not good enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

St. Louis Post Dispatch
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

SEOUL, South Korea\u00a0<\/strong>\u2022 Saying they wanted a more-advanced fighter in their largest-ever weapons purchase, South Korean military officials Tuesday rejected Boeing Co.’s bid to supply 60 F-15s and decided to re-open the contract.<\/p>\n

The decision came as a surprise, as Boeing was the sole remaining bidder for the $7.7 billion job. And it’s a blow to fighter-jet production in St. Louis, where an estimated 2,000 people work on the F-15’s final assembly line and thousands more work at suppliers.<\/p>\n

The 60-plane deal would have extended production here into the 2020s. Now Boeing is looking at a small and dwindling pool of customers for a fighter jet it has been building for decades.<\/p>\n

The age of the F-15 platform was a major factor in South Korea’s decision. While Boeing had upgraded the plane with new stealth capabilities \u2014\u00a0and even re-branded it the \u201cSilent Eagle\u201d \u2014\u00a0South Korean critics said the warplane lacks state-of-the-art capabilities and cannot effectively cope with North Korea’s increasing nuclear threats.<\/p>\n

Those concerns appear to have won out. Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said South Korea must have better air power in line with an international trend to develop “fifth generation” fighters, and said the rejection of Boeing’s bid was made in consideration of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and other factors. Ministry officials said he was referring to a warplane with cutting-edge radar-evading stealth functions which Boeing’s plane does not have.<\/span><\/div>\n

Boeing said in a statement that it was “deeply disappointed” by Tuesday’s decision, adding it “rigorously” followed the South Korean arms procurement agency’s instructions throughout the entire process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe await details from [Korea’s Defense Ministry] on its basis for the delay while evaluating our next options,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Korea said it plans to re-bid the contract and now hopes to make a decision next year. Analysts said the move suggests that South Korea ultimately wants Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a so-called \u201cfifth generation\u201d jet that \u2014\u00a0despite delays and huge cost overruns \u2014\u00a0has become the fighter of choice of the U.S. and, increasingly, of its larger allies, including South Korea’s neighbor Japan. Just last week The Netherlands agreed to purchase 37 F-35s for $4.5 billion. Lockheed had proposed the F-35 to South Korea, but the bid was originally considered overbudget and therefore disqualified. A new bid could result in a lower price, or a higher budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis seems to be heading in the F-35’s direction,\u201d said Richard Aboulafia, a defense analyst with The Teal Group near Washington, D.C. \u201cBut until we get clarity on what’s political and what’s a change in requirements, it’s hard to say for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s unclear what the future holds for the F-15, which first flew a half-century ago and has been a workhorse of the Air Force fleet for decades. A contract with Saudi Arabia will keep the plane in production through 2020, but beyond that, customers are few and far between. Boeing said \u201cinterest remains high\u201d for F-15 sales to customers in the Middle East and Asia, but Aboulafia said any orders would likely be small, nothing the size of South Korea’s 60-plane purchase.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s always had a very limited user pool,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St. Louis Post Dispatch click here for original article SEOUL, South Korea\u00a0\u2022 Saying they wanted a more-advanced fighter in their largest-ever weapons purchase, South Korean military officials Tuesday rejected Boeing Co.’s bid to supply 60 F-15s and decided to re-open the contract. The decision came as a surprise, as Boeing was the sole remaining bidder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2204,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[169],"class_list":["post-2203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/5240d247f41f1.preview-300.jpg?fit=179%2C210&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2205,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions\/2205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}