In an interesting, but poorly researched article in Strategy Page, the observation is made that South Korea is developing some interesting armored fighting vehicles that imitate/mimic American (and European) capabilities.
The author of the article draws the following comparisions:
“Over the last two decades, South Korea has developed, and produced in large numbers, their own versions of the U.S. M-1 tank (the South Korean K-1 and K-2), the U.S. M-2 Infantry Fighting Vehicle (the South Korean K-21) and the U.S. M-109 self-propelled 155mm howitzer (the South Korean K-9).”
Not so sure that the K-2 is Korea’s “own version” of the M1 Abrams tank since that title should rightfully go to the K-1 alone, but any ways. And at $8 mil a pop, the K-2 isn’t exactly cheap.
The article also implied that Korea is building the potential for another big export market. From Hyundai sedans to Doosan infantry fighting vehicles? Maybe. Korea’s military exports exceeded $1 billion for the first time ever.
{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t know why nations insist on building things like tanks, fighter planes, and ships anymore.
If there’s anything to be learned from the modern history of the American Empire, which has been consistently losing wars to shit-hole Third World countries since 1950, despite having the world’s most formidable and technologically advanced military, is that determined guerillas, employing asymmetrical warfare tactics, armed with nothing more than dirt-cheap rifles, mortars, and rockets can beat a far “superior” foe equipped with super-expensive fighter planes, tanks, etc.
NK,
I agree w/some of what you say, but tell that to Hamas as Israeli Merkava tanks and M109 howitzers blast them to dust…
SK produced weapon platforms are not necessarily that much cheaper. The K-21 has unit price of $3.6 million, K-1A1 tank $4.9 million, and K-2 tank $8.5 million. These are production unit price and not export package price.
The production unit price on M1A2 MBTs is $4.35 million. Export package price on M1A1 is around $5-6 million, and M1A2 $6.7 million, including spare parts, training, support, etc. For nations on a budget, they can opt for the M60-120S or M60T/Sabra Mk.3 for half the price.
The US Army is somewhat more price conscious, unlike the USAF. They know expensive programs like the Crusader and XM-8 will get chopped.
Where is this article getting their facts that these are cheap imitation (of old American technology) equipment?
For comparison’s sake, DPRK’s arms export industry is just 10% of ROK’s at $100 mil.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g3z9xxqn_sBddbb5HhWOocM8HxHQ
Ah, lovely!
cm,
Upon further examination, the Strategy Page article is crap.
On paper, in virtual “laboratory” environments, the newest Korean weapons appear to perform at or better than their U.S. equivalents. However, the nod has to go to U.S. weapons because U.S. weapons, for better or for worse, have been combat proven.
Price wise, Korean weapons don’t really appear all that much cheaper. Countries like Turkey buy Korean stuff because European countries don’t like to sell them full versions of their weapons and trade technology.
“And at $8 mil a pop, the K-2 isn’t exactly cheap.”
Sure, it’s much more expensive than what M1s went for originally (don’t know what they go for now), but my armored vehicle was several times more expensive.
America never lost to inferior armies.
The people of America defeated the American army themselves.
wjk the black-haired foreigner speaks the truth. NK is representative of that strand in American liberalism that always roots for the other guy to win, and rejoices when he seems to be doing so.
Americans have a bad habit of severely underestimating Asian countries in every way possible. They did it in Autos and electronics and we’ve seen what the results are. Now they’re doing it again in the military equipment.
I kinda have to agree…
Remember when RCA and Zenith use to make TVs? They kept saying… oh those little cheap Sonys and Panasonics are crap. We have a superior “service” network. Well, the problem was… that those “cheap” Japanese TVs didn’t need service.
Tortoise and the Hare… classic tale of steady hard work vs. gross complacency.
However, when it comes to modern weaponry, South Korea still has A LOT to prove. Still, they shouldn’t be entirely dismissed.
“America never lost to inferior armies.
The people of America defeated the American army themselves.”
Explain how soldiers from Upper Canada managed to burn down the White House?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington
…Although the war was a tie, you lost that battle.
“Remember when RCA and Zenith use to make TVs? They kept saying… oh those little cheap Sonys and Panasonics are crap. We have a superior “service” network. Well, the problem was… that those “cheap” Japanese TVs didn’t need service.”
LG owns Zenith.
Remember Toyota, Honda, now Hyundai? Remember all the Hyundai Accident and Samsuck jokes? “Cheap imitations”, they still say. “Asians can’t innovate they can only imitate and use their cheap Third World labor to make cheap things”. This attitude is still the majority to their own detriment.
It’s not a great wonder why America is losing their sole superpower status. They became so arrogant and complacent and lost their hunger – not even knowing what’s been happening in the rest of the world.
Perhaps some of those soldiers had been stationed in Upper Canada at some point, but they were British, not what would now be termed ‘Canadian’ (ie the settlers or the militia). An interesting war all around – if things had gone differently at certain points, Canada might have gone to the U.S., or parts of Vermont, Maine, etc. would have gone to the British.
# 14,
Yeah, but Zenith was a bit of a money pit…
Because they weren’t, in fact, Canadian militia, but British regulars dispatched from the Peninsular Campaign where they had just finished off Bonaparte’s Spanish pretensions (augmented by British regulars and slaves from the Caribbean). All-in-all the Continentals didn’t do too badly in fending off an attempt of the then world’s rising superpower to redeem its earlier defeat at their hands in the Revolutionary War.
#18 – Correct. They weren’t Canadian soldiers.
Maybe I’m blind, or just all Saturday’d out, but I can’t seem to find out to whom the ROK has been selling weapons too. A quick search and all I could find was:
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2008/01/30/korean-arms-and-the-wrong-hands-they-fall-into/
this old story on the hole and this,
http://www.heritage.org/research/asiaandthepacific/asb38.cfm
rather strangely written article from the 80′s. Does anyone know who is buying Lee Myung Bak’s guns? Just who is that fine Christian man exporting murder to? I’m always curious to see who Christians sell guns to.
who did China sell guns to?
who did Russia sell guns to?
who did Arabs sell guns to?
who did atheist govts sell guns to?
your logic is hogwash. Get over your personal venom against Christians.
it’s rather immature and baseless.
Prior to Lee Myungbak, except for Rhee Syngman and Kim Yongsam, South Korean govt had Buddhists, atheists as heads of states, selling more weapons with military graduation creds.
what to say about that?
wjk wins.
Hogwash – always a favourite at a Scrabble game.
@21: I wasn’t in Korea having make-believe righteous Christian Koreans shoving their make-believe righteousness in my face every five minutes when their supposedly moral church elder bulldozer was selling guns around the world.
Unable to fight the past or the future, I’m left to struggle with the now, and what’s real.
So, think you can answer the question with something other than smartass hogwash? (ht to 22)
Who is Korea selling guns to?
I wonder how much of South Korean weapons are appropriate for US military’s needs. Much of it is American technology anyway.
I would think that US army could use the K-9 and K-10 since the concept seems to be American to begin with. As for the T-50, it even has an American designation.
Apparently, even some parts are interchangeable. I think the U.S. military bought $150 mil worth of K-9 parts for use in their own SPA.
well, I don’t know. I suppose Burma was on the list.
Hey, at least American weapons don’t seem to be popular with ‘people who believe in blowing up 3rd parties to make a point’.
I’d say this is the case with most free-world nations.
well, what about non-Christians in China? They sell to Sudan.
what about Soviets in the past? They sold to the Middle East. Every crap nation on earth sports an AK-47 rifle. The rifle that will shoot well, where accuracy does not matter.
take political science, the first class.
they will say flat out that no nation on earth has survived without arming itself.
I don’t know why S. Korea insists that it develop its own versions of almost every weapon in the market when they are a) imitations of existing weapons(most of the technology there is imported or reverse engineered, contrary to Korean claims) and b) more expensive to do so.
So, ok, on may argue that it is a way to build up an another export industry. But Korea can’t export something that has 70% American or European content without specific approval from the source countries. And if those countries decide that they don’t want to approve, well so much for the export dollars.
wjk,
It has more to do with price and quality. The Russians make their weapons cheap, rugged and plentiful… because people are expendable in a communist government and technology is scarce because people are not motivated to innovate.
So if you are a third world terrorist, what would you buy for the same price? Ten AK-47s or five M-16s? Even if the AK is only 70% as effective as an M-16, you are still in the money if you stick with the AK.
The Other Korean–
Obviously, it’s not more expensive to do so. If you take a look at South Korean weapons, it’s optimized for use for the South Korean military. Take a look at the Korean K1 tank. Compared to the American M1, it’s smaller, lighter, and cheaper. It also have those “sitting” features that let’s it shoot downhill better. As for the K-9 system, it’s really an evolutionary improvement over the previous American system. The only other weapon that’s comparable in the market is the German pzh2000. The K-9 is also cheaper than the German system. As for the T-50 trainer, there really isn’t a comparable product as it is the only supersonic trainer on the market. If you go as far back as the K2 rifle, that rifle was designed for the smaller frames of Koreans at the time. In addition the K2 rifle is again, also cheaper than the vietnam era M-16 which it replaced. As for the KDX-III, again, this is another one of those evolutionary improvement over the American Burke class ship.
As for having foreign technology in the Korean system, those same foreign companies have just as much profit incentive to support the sale of these weapons. For example, the T-50 is essentially half Lockheed Martin product, and they aggressively market it. For the K-9, Raytheon is involved and again, they market it aggressively as well. The bottomline is that when South Korean arms dealers export weapons, other countries other than Korea also make money.
Let’s say that South Korea started to spend a load of cash on a comparable system to the American AEGIS. Then I would agree with you that Korea is wasting money. But right now, they are sticking to what they are good at, and is making weapons that is optimized for Korean use, and/or niche market, and/or products with incremental improvements. There is no particular reason to buy a Burke when Korea has substantial ship building/designing capabilities. That’s saving money.
“Perhaps some of those soldiers had been stationed in Upper Canada at some point, but they were British, not what would now be termed ‘Canadian’ (ie the settlers or the militia).”
Actually, Europeans have been living in Canada since 1604, so it’s not as if the soldiers were all British born. There was such a thing as Upper or Lower Canada back then. Many of the soldiers who fought were members of the Upper Canada Militia. Quite a few were also Native Canadians and freed African American slaves.
Nevertheless, the expeditionary force that invaded Maryland and burned D.C. consisted entirely of British regulars newly arrived from Spain, augmented by British regulars and slave conscripts from the Caribbean colonies and some locally recruited slaves who were manumitted for their trouble.
Long before the fall of RCA, Zenith, etc., they had already exported the production facilities abroad. RCA had contracted its VCR production to Matsushita (Panasonic) and left a toxic dump at their former factory in Taoyuan, Taiwan.
Tanks and planes have killed far fewer civilians as a whole than small arms. The US is a leading exporter of small arms and has increased over the past decade. Previous UN attempts to restrict small arms trade was opposed by US government on basis of conflict with US Constitution (right to bear arms), because the UN restrictions included restricting arms ownership/trade by civilians.
China was a leading exporter of small arms up until 1990′s. They had many small arms factories ran by PLA, and the government had difficulty bringing them in line until Jiang Zemin ordered PLA to divest all their business operations and “get back to work”.
At the time, China’s biggest small arms maker was Poly Tech & NORINCO, headed by Deng Xiaoping’s son-in-law. I suspect Jiang started his move by decapitating the biggest, but held off until Deng was on his death bed. Then suddenly 2,000 auto AK-47′s from Poly Tech showed up in US ATF bust and guess who became the fall guy in China. After that, when Jiang ordered the PLA to divest its business holdings, everyone fell in line.
The biggest issue with Chinese small arms export today is not the numbers — the dollar amounts are actually tiny ($55 million small arms to Sudan 2004-2006) compared to other countries. It’s that they’re willing to sell to governments in “conflict zones” like Sudan and Sri Lanka.
(cont.)
As for selling arms into conflict zones, nobody is guilt free here — US, Briton, France, and even S. Korea. SK sold arms to Turkey, which has been engaged in an armed conflict with PKK, resulting in ~45,000 killed from 1984-2008. Sooner or later the arms supplied by SK will be used to bomb Kurdish villages over the Iraqi border. Let’s see if it results in outage or press whitewash.
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