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Price negotiations with U.S. aerospace giant Boeing to supply Korea with four aerial surveillance planes have hit stormy waters, leading to yet another delay in the already epic saga of the E-X Project. The deadline for negotiations is now extended to November, rather than September as envisaged.
Lee Yong-chul, deputy commissioner of the Defense Acquisition Program Agency (DAPA) said Wednesday, ¡°The plan was originally to finish price negotiations by the end of September, but with the incessant wrangling, we have decided to push the deadline to November¡± to give the negotiations some flexibility. Asked what will happen if the two sides fail to reach common ground by the new deadline, Lee said, ¡°All options are open.¡± That could mean a review of the entire project.
The E-X Project is touted as a key component of intelligence gathering needed for the sole exercise of wartime operational control, and this seems to have been considered in the handing down of the decision to delay. The total budget for the project is around W1.58 trillion (US$1=W944), which is to cover the purchase and introduction of the four AWACS planes. Boeing is reportedly asking for more.
Meanwhile, a U.S. official who was at the Defense Technological & Industrial Cooperation Committee (DTICC), which convened Tuesday in Seoul, has expressed interest in backing Korea¡¯s quest to buy high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles, DAPA said. Alfred Volkman, the director of defense of international cooperation with the U.S. Defense Department ¡°expressed the intention to back Korea on the project after we asked for his support and understanding,¡± it said. But Volkman is not in charge of the division that deals with sales of the cutting-edge Global Hawk, which Korea covets but which Washington will not sell, so his comments may have been little more than polite noise.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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