Ministry of National Defence Restarts AWACS Business

The introduction of EX plan for Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), which was scheduled to be finished this month, will be proceeded from the starting point again.

The National Defence Ministry’s Won Jang-hwan (Major general), director general for Acquisition Policy Affairs, announced yesterday that “the test evaluation of the U.S. Boeing B737 and the Israel IAI ELTA G550 showed that the Israeli equipment’s radar detecting ability does not satisfy the Required Operational Capability (ROC), and so competitive bidding is not possible. Therefore, we decided to restart the evaluation process.”

Director General Won said, “We will discuss this in a National Security Council meeting and MND development meeting. We cannot sign a free contract with only one company, and need several firms to make the evaluation process fair and transparent.”

The Defence Ministry planed to buy four units of AWACS by 2012 with two trillion won budget. However, this decision caused the project to be delayed a year.

Sang-Ho Yun ysh1005@donga.com