S. Korea says 'NO' to Boeing, 'YES' to Lockheed... Reversal

The geopolitical and strategy view, IMO.

As most countries can rarely afford to upgrade their fighter fleet, to put it in car terms why would you buy the last year of an ancient model like the F15 upgraded or not? The South Korean military would be foolish to do so and they know it. With the periodic expense involved, you would certainly delay and do anything possible to get your government to upgrade to the new generation. They will be flying these planes for 20+ years. The F-15 is a product, albeit much developed of the mid 1970's already over 30 years old.

North Korea is not really a threat in the air-their forces operate antiquated equipment. With their dire budgetary condition, do you think their fleet is well maintained and their pilots enjoying a lot of flight time and training? I don't. Given the massive technical superiority of a 5th fighter verses Nor Kor forces-you would anticipate that losses in combat would be near nil with a 5th gen force, or even 4th gen. Were there to be a campaign, the losses would be due to equipment failure, pilot error, weather conditions, not the Migs of North Kor.

Further more, this is an air force not oriented to Nor Kor, but China. There you would face better equipment and likely a massive numerical superiority on the air. The only way to face that is have massive technical superiority in the air, to prevent losses of equipment and pilots and give a hope against fighting an enemy with massive numerical superiority and their intention to win via attrition.

Another argument is that the 5th gen fighter will be in production a long time, the USAF will have stocks of them. That means your air force could be rapidly re-equiped with state of the art planes from US stocks, should you need. Also, in planning joint operations, the South Kor AF would have the same equipment a the US and joint planning is thus simplified.

The future of the next 20-30- years is the creation of an alliance similar to Nato and the EU, built among the emerging and developed nations of the Pacific-Korea, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia,Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, Taiwan etc. to counterbalance the power of China. The alliance we should be working on with ASEAN this coming week, though we will not be showing up as our government is taking a break. More important stuff than the key battle front of the next thirty years you know : )

In this equation nothing else makes sense but a 5th Gen US built and designed Fighter. It's a "no-brainer" as they say : )

 

Here are some points to consider with SK and the F-15K/SE:

S.K., just purchased new built F-15K's.
Common airframes - less parts to stock
reduced training costs.
F-15SE has a larger bomb-load
Eagle is less expensive
Eagle has longer legs

Will stealth keep ahead of future anti-air weapons systems ?