South Korean F-16 upgrade: BAE out, Lockheed in
After South Korea reneged on a contract with BAE Systems to upgrade its KF-16 fighter fleet, Seoul has now inked an alternative contract with Lockheed Martin.
The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) deal, announced by the US Department of Defense (DoD) on 18 November, is worth the princely sum of slightly over $1.2 billion to perform a midlife upgrade on 134 aircraft.
The final configuration of the Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) fighters will be the equivalent of an F-16V. Among key improvements is an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, almost certainly to be Northrop Grumman’s APG-81 Scalable
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