The Korean Government may abandon a plan to buy Global Hawks because their price is way higher than the budget. The government and military have aggressively pushed to buy the Global Hawk since 2005 to build up South Korea’s own reconnaissance capabilities in preparation for the handover of full operational control of South Korean troops from the US in December 2015.
But the US wants US$ 800 billion, a senior government official said on Sunday. “We can’t afford to buy the drones unless it drastically cuts the price,” he added. The US nearly doubled the price it first quoted. Military authorities earmarked US$ 159 billion for the project in 2007, anticipating that it would be possible to buy four Global Hawks for about $170 billion. But the US in September 2009 quoted $415 billion and then doubled the price to about $800 billion in July this year.
The U. says the drastic hike was due in large part to lower demand in the wake of defense budget cuts. But military officers suspect Washington probably quoted an inflated price because it knows how urgently South Korea needs reconnaissance aircraft. “Will the public and the National Assembly accept it if we buy the reconnaissance aircraft by spending far more than we can afford, no matter how important the bilateral alliance is and how essential the Global Hawks are for our preparations to take over the full operational control?” a military source asked.
If the Global Hawk plan founders, there will inevitably be a loophole in the military’s own reconnaissance capabilities after the Korea-US Combined Forces Command is dissolved in December 2015, making the country vulnerable in terms of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance over North Korea. The military wanted to buy the Global Hawks to patch that weakness. It can stay in the air for 36 hours, much longer than the U.S. Forces Korea’s U-2 reconnaissance aircraft or South Korea’s Geumgang aerial video reconnaissance planes.
Moreover, the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft is highly likely to be decommissioned after 2012. Even though a Global Hawk squadron, which was deployed on Guam last year, takes off to reconnoiter Northeast Asia, there could still be blind spots because it does not fly over the Korean Peninsula around the clock.
In a questionnaire for the audit of the Defense Ministry, Grand National Party lawmaker Kim Jang-soo of the National Assembly Defense Committee said, “We now need to choose between two models — the Global Hawk and the Global Observer,” another U.S.-made reconnaissance aircraft, which is cheaper.
The Korean military is also considering a homegrown medium-altitude unmanned aircraft as a potential alternative, given that development of the Global Observer is not yet complete. It could be used for reconnaissance over the North if it is improved, despite its shorter flight distance and lower reconnaissance capability.
Source: The Chosunilbo
As you figured out, the numbers don’t make sense. The original article quoted the currency in South Korean Won. You can pretty much read “million” instead of “billion” for this article.
it should be in millions and not billions.