South Korea: F-35 could meet F-X Phase 3 program deadline

The South Korean air force rates all of the Western competitors for its F-X Phase 3 fighter program, including the F-35 Lightning, as capable of meeting the in-service date of 2016, an assessment that appears to raise the chances of the Lockheed Martin aircraft.

The air force does not express the same view on the fourth and most recent competitor for the planned 60-aircraft order, the Sukhoi PAK FA.

The Eurofighter Typhoon is in service and can therefore meet the schedule, the air force says in an unpublished briefing paper. And although it notes that the F-35 and the Boeing F-15SE Silent Eagle are not fully developed, the air force says they can be ready in time.

That judgment is less important for the F-15SE than for the F-35. The Boeing fighter would be modified for the SE version mainly by introducing fly-by-wire flight controls, adapting its conformal fuel tanks to house weapon bays and by canting the tail fins with a straightforward structural change—objectives that should be achievable well before 2016.

But for the Lightning the air force’s assessment seems to sweep aside concerns that, while the stealth fighter is especially well suited to the air-to-ground part of the F-X Phase 3 requirement, its repeatedly delayed development schedule has become uncomfortably tight for South Korea’s needs.

The U.S. Air Force does not expect its F-35As to be operational until 2018. Its definition of initial operational capability is more demanding than South Korea’s, but the U.S. schedule offers little reassurance for potential buyers that would need the aircraft earlier.

Even if the South Korean air force’s assessment is not realistic, the expression of that view at least means that the service is willing to proceed as if the F-35 complies fully with its requirements. And if the air force is bending the rules for the F-35, then it seems to be showing a preference for it.

On the other hand, the F-X Phase 3 program could be delayed, giving more time for Lockheed Martin to meet the schedule. The company has said it could deliver aircraft to South Korea in 2016—but that is not the same as establishing an operational capability.

In the briefing paper, the air force is silent on the question of whether the PAK FA would be ready in time. The failure to endorse the Russian fighter’s schedule can only raise concerns that the aircraft, a late entry into the race, is regarded as only a stalking horse for the Western fighters.

 

-aviationweek.com

Fighters vie in Korean F-X Phase 3 program

South Korea aims to choose a supplier for 60 advanced fighters next year, balancing industrial ambitions against a need to deter North Korea and concerns about emerging Chinese and Russian air-to-air threats.

Contenders for the F-X Phase 3 program are the Boeing F-15SE Silent Eagle, Eurofighter Typhoon and Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Each has merits. Local industry is helping to develop the Silent Eagle, a stealthier version of the F-15K, and makes major parts for all F-15s, while the air force shows strong signs of wanting the F-35’s stealth for the crucial strike mission. In a market dominated by U.S. manufacturers, the Typhoon must rely heavily on its flight performance and on Eurofighter’s great scope for technology transfer.

The Typhoon was little more than a stalking horse in F-X Phase 1, in which Boeing won an order for 40 F-15Ks in 2002. Only Boeing bid for F-X Phase 2, resulting in a contract for 21 more F-15Ks in 2008. The F-X requirement emerged in the late 1980s and has met repeated budgetary delays. Phase 3 will not move to a decision next year unless parliament allocates money for the aircraft.

The Phase 3 aircraft would partly replace F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers, and would be replaced in the strike role by 2030 by a domestically developed combat drone. Even with the new aircraft, the fighter force will drop to 400 from 500 by 2020.

South Korea faces more than 300 North Korean heavy artillery pieces in range of Seoul, and, far from the border, an uncertain number of nuclear ballistic missiles of unknown quality. The ability to rapidly knock out guns and missiles that threaten cities while pounding command bunkers is critically important. The air threat from North Korea is not an immediate concern.

South Korean fighters would not fly more than 1,000 km (621 mi.) to destroy North Korean nuclear missiles. The most northerly F-15K base is 430 km from Pyongyang. Also, China and Russia may introduce their own stealth fighters—the Chengdu J-20 and Sukhoi PAK-FA, respectively—this decade.

An ability to penetrate hostile airspace covertly, the strongest selling point of the F-35, is an “immensely important capability,” said air force Col. Taek-Hwan Song, at a seminar in Seoul in May. Song, leader of the department that plans air force requirements, expressed a relaxed view on the affordability of the F-35 and its schedule for service entry, despite cost overruns and delays. “A general misunderstanding about the fifth-generation stealth fighter is that it is expensive; it’s never too expensive,” he said. As for the aim of putting the F-X Phase 3 aircraft into service in 2018, just as the U.S. Air Force makes the F-35 operational, he notes that South Korea’s definition of operational is less demanding than that of USAF.

The Silent Eagle has the advantage of offering more work to Korea Aerospace Industries, which builds the wings and forward fuselages of F-15s for all customers and is helping to develop and make the conformal weapon bays fitted on the sides of the proposed stealthier version, for munitions, equipment and fuel. The stealthier F-15 would also have much commonality with 60 F-15Ks, cutting operational costs, though the version would be unique to South Korea unless Saudi Arabia, a potential customer, also buys it.

The Typhoon has an advantage over U.S. competitors on the issue of technology transfer that South Korea demands for its proposed KF-X fighter in the 2020s, since Eurofighter partners EADS and BAE Systems are not subject to Washington’s strict controls. Moreover, U.S. support for Asian fighter programs has consistently avoided creating competitors for U.S. aircraft.

Eurofighter says its aircraft can counter stealthy attackers. A flight of Typhoons flying in a wall formation can detect them at operationally useful ranges by sharing and triangulating azimuth data from passive sensors. Typhoons may even have detected Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors that way last year.

Such counter-stealth capability would be valued against the J-20 and PAK-FA, but one F-X Phase 3 program official says an excellent strike capability would be valued more highly. Unless the South Korean air force, structured for combined operations with the U.S. Air Force against North Korea, transformed into a force for unilateral action, chances for a non-U.S. aircraft buy seem low.

 

-aviationweek.com

Seoul Demands For Fighters

Hidden among hills, mostly in tunnels, hundreds of North Korean heavy artillery pieces stand ready to rain thousands of shells a minute onto Seoul. For decades, the big guns have been the biggest threat that South Korea has had to face. More recently a new one has become more prominent in the South’s strategic calculations: an uncertain number of nuclear warheads of uncertain performance and reliability, potentially fitted to ballistic missiles fired from heavily protected sites in the far north of the Korean Peninsula.

No wonder, then, that strike and survivability are key requirements in South Korea’s F-X Phase 3 contest for 60 fighters.

But look a bit further. Even if North Korea collapses, South Korea will remain a neighbor of authoritarian, nationalistic and increasingly assertive China, which says it will field an advanced new fighter in 2017-19. And a united Korea would also have a border with Russia, which is developing its supercruising, stealthy PAK FA fighter.

That explains why the South Korean air force ranks air-to-air capability equally with strike as it seeks parliamentary funding for the program, with the aim of choosing the Boeing F-15SE Silent Eagle, Eurofighter Typhoon or Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter next year.

Pressed to nominate a priority, one program official says that an excellent strike capability would be valued more highly than an excellent air-to-air capability. Rapidly knocking out those guns, and ranging far into North Korea to hit ballistic missile launchers, nuclear facilities and command nodes would be critically important if war came.

That is one reason the stealthy F-35 is a strong contender for the order. But the repeated delays to the Joint Strike Fighter program are strengthening the hands of the F-35’s competitors.

F-X Phase 3 currently requires a first delivery in 2016, with initial operational capability in 2018, says air force Col. Taek-Hwan Song, who addressed a seminar on the program in Seoul last month held by the Korea Defense and Security Forum. The target dates should be easy for Boeing and Eurofighter to meet, but maybe not for Lockheed Martin.

The issue is not so much making deliveries in 2016. Lockheed Martin says that, since the company will deliver 135 F-35s to the U.S. and its partners in 2016, a handful for South Korea should not be too much of a problem.

Rather, the difficulty lies in getting a novel aircraft type into service at almost the same time as its lead customer. While the U.S. definition of “operational” is more demanding than South Korea’s, it is clear that the F-35’s schedule is now tight for a customer whose old fighters will run out of life around the end of the decade. It would be very hard to keep flying the aircraft that the F-35 is to replace—F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers—past 2020, says Song. Australia, a committed F-35 customer, is in much the same position.

F-X Phase 3 could easily slip, however, boosting the F-35’s chances. The overall F-X program first emerged in 1988, and it took until 2002 before parliament had loosened its purse strings enough to allow the order of a batch of fighters under Phase 1. Parliament may not approve funding for Phase 3 this year.

A further complication is the demand that the winning bidder transfer technology to help South Korea to develop its proposed KF-X fighter. This requirement is now backed by the air force, which previously looked askance at the costly ambitions of the technologists in the defense ministry (see p. 22).

On this point Eurofighter, represented in South Korea by EADS, has a clear advantage over its U.S. competitors, since it is not subject to Washington’s strict rules on technology transfer. Eurofighter proposes that the Typhoon become the basis of KF-X, diminishing risk for the ambitious but still insufficiently experienced local industry.

Still, as a non-U.S. supplier, Eurofighter must wonder whether it is being used only as a stalking horse for Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The local military’s habit of buying U.S. equipment and the great effort that the U.S. puts into defending South Korea are factors that cannot be overlooked. Yet they also should not be overstated. EADS unit Eurocopter is supporting the development of South Korea’s Surion utility military helicopter.

Related to the issue of technology transfer, the Typhoon can also be put into local production, an important issue for local industry, since Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) will probably need a replacement for the production line of its FA-50 light attack aircraft, a derivative of the T-50 supersonic trainer, this decade.

Major parts of the F-15 are already in local production, since the type won F-X Phase 1 and 2, with orders for 40 and 21 F-15Ks, respectively. Boeing’s technology-transfer offer is based partly on KAI working on the Silent Eagle, which at this late stage in the F-15’s development cycle introduces fly-by-wire flight controls, weapons bays and canted tail fins.

KAI builds the wings and forward fuselages of F-15s for all customers, and could step up to a larger share of the aircraft structure if the big new order went to Boeing. For the Silent Eagle, KAI is helping to develop and make conformal packs fitted to each side of the aircraft to house munitions, equipment and fuel. South Korea is not the only country interested in fitting them, says Brad Jones, director of Boeing’s U.S. Air Force F-15 development programs. The packs will presumably be an option for the F-15Ks of Phase 1 and 2.

The canted fins of the Silent Eagle are not a large structural change that could threaten the 2016 delivery date, says Boeing. A new mounting structure is used but the fins themselves are unchanged from those of earlier F-15s.

While KAI has plant and trained workers for making F-15s, the air force has the equipment and skills needed to maintain them, thanks to the two previous phases of F-X. Accordingly, Boeing reckons its bid is the cheapest.

In other competitions Boeing must contend with a presumption that the customer will eventually buy the F-35 anyway, raising the temptation of moving on to that generation immediately. But South Korea’s plans—if they survive the perils of budgets and development challenges—suggest that F-X Phase 3 is Lockheed Martin’s only chance to sell its fighter to one of the biggest buyers of Western combat aircraft. The country’s next fighter requirement after F-X—F-XX—is supposed to be filled by the indigenous KF-X. Then the combat aircraft after that is to be pilotless.

F-X Phase 3 thus offers the South Korean air force an opportunity to consolidate its top-end fighter force on 120 F-15s, eliminating an intermediate type—but only if it bets that its two follow-on domestic programs will succeed.

The F-35 enjoys an obvious advantage as South Korea ponders its strike mission, although Boeing and Eurofighter argue that there is much more to stealth than an all-aspect low radar cross section, and that there is much more to survivability than stealth. South Korea has not yet modeled the effects of characteristics such as radar cross section and flight performance. Eurofighter, apparently confident of what South ­Korea will discover, urges it to do so. The air force suggested in 2008 that it could not accept compromises in flight performance, an attitude that would favor the Typhoon and Silent Eagle, with their low wing and thrust loadings, not to mention outright speed.

 

-aviationweek.com