South Korea resets Fighter Jet bidding

[spazsinbad]

Here is another SoulKindOfFeeling Story....

Exclusive: South Korea nearing decision to buy F-35 fighters 23 Oct 2013 Andrea Shalal-Esa and Joyce Lee, Reuters

"WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea is nearing a decision to buy some Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets, but will likely keep its options open for a limited purchase of Boeing Co's F-15, sources familiar with the country's fighter competition said on Wednesday.

South Korean officials could announce their plans as early as November to secure the funding needed to ensure initial deliveries of the F-35 in 2017, according to multiple sources who were not authorized to speak publicly. They cautioned that the decisions were not yet final, and an announcement could still be postponed if the decision-making process hits a snag....

...South Korean officials have said they are examining a mixed procurement approach that could help Seoul maintain sufficient numbers of fighters in its fleet if the F-35 runs into further delays. They are also looking at scaling back the size of the order to 40 or 50 planes....

...South Korean officials are under pressure to commit to at least some F-35 purchases soon, given their own budget deadlines, and the need to start buying certain "long-lead" materials needed for any jets that would be delivered in 2017....

..."South Korea will need to decide on a plan as soon as possible in order to secure (the project's) budget for next year," said one source with direct knowledge of a task force set up last month to review options for the delayed fighter jet buy.

U.S. officials say South Korea must make a commitment by the end of 2013 to secure a place in the ninth low-rate production contract for F-35 jets and ensure delivery of the first planes in 2017.

The Pentagon needs to include any South Korean jets in an advanced procurement contract for "long-lead" items, such as titanium parts, said a source familiar with the F-35 program.

Four additional sources familiar with the South Korean process told Reuters that they expected an announcement by early November. Two other sources expected a decision by year's end.

South Korea's parliament must put in place concrete acquisition plans by December to ensure funding for an initial batch of jets, which would have to be ordered in 2014....

...One of the sources said Seoul was expected to commit to buying F-35s without specifying an exact number, leaving open the possibility of a mixed fleet...."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ ... 6263.story

[lookieloo]

Well, the SE still doesn't make sense, but I'd understand if they opted for a Korean SA variant (along with some upgrades) until the F-35 matures just a bit more.

[spazsinbad]

Korea aviation plan ‘a mess’ 24 Oct 2013 Bill Sweetman *The author is senior international defense editor of Aviation Week.

"Fighter procurements are ponderous, complicated and subject to political interference.

Whatever you think of the outcome of South Korea’s F-X III fighter selection - now leaning toward the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter - you cannot deny that it is a mess. The government first created a new agency to manage its defense procurements, set clear selection criteria for 60 new fighters and told the Defense Acquisition Program Administration to git’er done. DAPA picked the F-15SE, a decision that the government speedily set aside.

In accordance with a common definition of insanity, the luckless agency must now go through the same process in hopes of a different outcome. DAPA has caught one break: Eurofighter will be back for round two, so DAPA will not be tied across a sole-source barrel after throwing out binding offers presented in 2013.

Fighter procurements are ponderous, complicated and subject to political interference. The last-named attribute is a feature, not a bug: The price tag gets the Treasury involved, other military services have to vote, and the relationship between the supplier and its own national government will last longer than most marriages.

That said, Korea’s decision stands out because the government had tried to do better. After Dassault noisily bailed out of F-X1 in 2002, alleging that the fix had been in for a U.S. win from the outset, Korea tried to clean up its act by forming DAPA.

Whether or not it was based on a study of Sweden’s FMV, the Korean agency emerged with similar key features: civilian, not subordinate to the services, responsible to the whole of government, and including in its brief, domestic research and development. This would all have been fine had the government not responded to DAPA’s first controversial decision by folding like a cheap suit.

Overt pressure on the government came from 15 former air staff chiefs, who signed an emotional screed that not too subtly evoked a possible threat from F-35-armed Japan. There are a few problems with this sort of appeal.

Former generals have no more access to classified F-35 or threat data than the rest of us (or at least they should not). The Japanese threat might play to the man in the Seoul karaoke bar, but one does not need tinfoil headgear to suspect that. In the event of such a conflict, both sides’ F-35s would succumb to software maladies and stop working rather quickly. And while the generals may all be motivated by pure patriotism, we know that if paying retired officers to influence decisions were illegal, the U.S. defense industry would have to move its business development activities to federal correctional facilities.

There may not have been any U.S. government pressure involved. And Barney might be a real dinosaur. Korea’s 60 near-term orders (the aircraft are needed to replace aging F-4s) are important for the F-35. As recent briefings have shown, the program needs 300 non-U.S. orders in the next 4-5 years to prime the production line and support an orderly ramp-up.

Failure to secure those orders may not kill the program, but they will make it harder to gain the sunlit uplands of building 150-plus per year and un-F-22-like costs. The Netherlands cutting its buy to 37 from 85, and the U.K. punting two-thirds of its nominally planned offtake into the long grass of the later 2020s, are not promising signs that the program’s founding partners are good for those early orders.

It would be understandable if Korea underestimated the importance of an F-35 order to Washington and assumed that an F-15 buy would be of equal validity. When F-X III was in its formative years in 2009, the Pentagon’s high sheriffs believed the F-35 program was blasting ahead toward initial operational capability this year. The Asian market was a sideshow, another dish to be gobbled up in due course.

Korea is in no position to ignore U.S. government warnings about the two nations’ strategic relationship. The next year or so will see how and whether Korea manages to reach a decision that meets the needs of its armed forces, its Treasury and its major ally, while restoring international confidence in the integrity of its procurement process.

Korea’s about-face is a tactical win for the F-35. However, the aircraft has yet to win an open, rules-based competition where all sides were expected to bid a fixed price. Most of its committed buyers, including the U.S. services, signed on when the aircraft was promised to be much earlier and cheaper than it is today. And given the repeated claims of advocates that the price of the F-35A is headed down into F-16 country, the fact that it was beaten on price by not only the massive twin-engine F-15 Eagle but also the Eurofighter Typhoon - from the people who make Aston Martins, Porsches and Lamborghinis - has to raise some eyebrows.

We’ll see what happens in the next open, rules-based, fixed-price, professionally executed competition. What? I’m not saying definitively that Barney can’t be some subspecies of theropoda."

http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/new ... id=2979318

[lookieloo]

Korea aviation plan ‘a mess’ 24 Oct 2013 Bill Sweetman

IT'S BEAUTIFUL!!!!!


Really, that was truly perfect. I was starting to wonder where he'd went after embarrassing himself over a non-existent entry by Gripen into the T-X contest. Guess he had to find somewhere else to vent.

[spazsinbad]

So that is a tinfoil hat. I prefer the crinkled aloominum foil variety. (The all illuminum death tube)

[bigjku]

I am honestly surprised the aviation week continues to let him write for them.

I find the whole line of logic with DAPA to be funny. Korea set something up, tried it for a major program and then decided that it really was not working as they intended so they elected to modify how they do things. In a lot of places things like that are called progress. The conversation they are having is the same on a business making a large capital expenditure might have regarding phone systems or computer servers or robotic assembly machines. Two options might meet exactly what they set out to do. But do you still buy the 10-20% less expensive one (assuming the difference here is even that) if the more expensive option can do a much better job for much longer? A knee jerk decision to buy the cheapest thing that will meet your needs is silly. You may weigh both alternatives and still decide to go cheap. That is fine. But a proper decision weighs all the factors and decides what is best long-term. Particularly for something that will be a 30-50 year asset.

And can we also stop this whole Netherlands is cutting its orders nonsense? That 80 number has been out of date for a very long time and the fact of the matter is they were going to end up right around 40ish fighters whatever they bought unless it was legacy Gripen's. They buy NG's or Eurofighters and they probably have the same or very similar numbers of aircraft bought. This is a nation that once had 445 very modern tanks in its ranks and now operates zero. They are simply trying to maintain the ability to regenerate an air force if they have to later and nothing more.

[SpudmanWP]

When you tun out of facts....
.
.
.
Just make $hit up

[aaam]

Whatever you may think of Bill, in this case his analysis of Korea's process is pretty much spot on. Korea's real desire was to buy the F-35. Rather than go out and just do it, they set up a sham "competition" to determine the selection. When following their own rules didn't come out the way they expected, they simply blew the whole thing off and went with what they wanted to do to begin with. Why bother putting the companies through all this?

And he's also correct that the US Gov't has a vested interest in F-35 export sales, because those sales are part of what is going to determine the price of F-35s. F-15 sales won't help that. So it seems logical that the US would be interested in putting some pressure out there for other countries to make the "right" choice, our chosen export instrument.

Notice I'm not getting into the capabilites of the various aspirants.

[lookieloo]

And he's also correct that the US Gov't has a vested interest in F-35 export sales, because those sales are part of what is going to determine the price of F-35s.

Which begs the question: Why was the program structured to be so dependent on early, high-volume export in the first place? Seriously, this is one part of the project that has always baffled me.

In any case, it probably doesn't matter. Bill wasn't very specific about those 300 orders. Did he mean 300 more? Excluding Canada/Denmark/Singapore/Korea, and including reductions by others, I still came up with a likely foreign-order book of 544.

[aaam]

And he's also correct that the US Gov't has a vested interest in F-35 export sales, because those sales are part of what is going to determine the price of F-35s.

Which begs the question: Why was the program structured to be so dependent on early, high-volume export in the first place? Seriously, this is one part of the project that has always baffled me.

In any case, it probably doesn't matter. Bill wasn't very specific about those 300 orders. Did he mean 300 more? Excluding Canada/Denmark/Singapore/Korea, and including reductions by others, I still came up with a likely foreign-order book of 544.

Answer to question 1:

So that the numbers wold come out the way they wanted.

Answer to question 2:

The orders have to actually take place, not just estimated. Look how much the UK order has gone down. Also very significantly, it's when those orders and deliveries take place. Planes that don't get built until 2025 do not help the ramp-up and keep the production run high.

[lookieloo]

The orders have to actually take place, not just estimated. Look how much the UK order has gone down. Also very significantly, it's when those orders and deliveries take place. Planes that don't get built until 2025 do not help the ramp-up and keep the production run high.

Which largely goes along with what I've been saying... that delayed orders hurt the program more than cut orders (which may or may-not stay cut). In any case, my estimate is very far from a best-case scenario; so even if Sweetman's "recent briefing" is right on the money, I'm not too worried.

As for the matter at hand, the competition was indeed a sham, just not for the reason Sweetman seems to think. If it was supposed to be a fig-leaf for predetermined selection of the JSF, why then was it set up with rules making it impossible for the F-35 to win? The short of it is that the "sham" wasn't for the Korean people's benefit... it was for the DoD's, a half-baked plan to haggle the F-35's price that misunderstood how FMS actually works.

[spazsinbad]

Whatever the reasons to claim that the Koreans do not understand FMS is outrageous. However I do not claim to know the reason for the schmozzle of the South Korean competition except hope they get it 'right' according to their own satisfaction. I like the way Australia does things.

[lookieloo]

Whatever the reasons to claim that the Koreans do not understand FMS is outrageous.

When all other explanations are exhausted...
Either they didn't understand, or they assumed our rules were more pliable than theirs (which would also indicate misunderstanding).

[spazsinbad]

The whole process is obscure and fair enough. Just do not assume too much about 'misunderstandings'.

[Corsair1963]

Whatever you may think of Bill, in this case his analysis of Korea's process is pretty much spot on. Korea's real desire was to buy the F-35. Rather than go out and just do it, they set up a sham "competition" to determine the selection. When following their own rules didn't come out the way they expected, they simply blew the whole thing off and went with what they wanted to do to begin with. Why bother putting the companies through all this?

And he's also correct that the US Gov't has a vested interest in F-35 export sales, because those sales are part of what is going to determine the price of F-35s. F-15 sales won't help that. So it seems logical that the US would be interested in putting some pressure out there for other countries to make the "right" choice, our chosen export instrument.

Notice I'm not getting into the capabilites of the various aspirants.

You maybe right yet look at Canada. It has selected the F-35 and has received considerable "Heat" for not looking at other options. Even when it's clear that the F-35 is the best option for Canada on a number of levels. That of course comes both Political and Military Leadership with in Canada.