Korea looks beyond Europe's Meteor to arm KF-21 with homegrown missile

[NEWS ANALYSIS] 

Korea has billed the KF-21 Boramae as its first homegrown fighter jet, but the missile that gives it long-range punch is European. The MBDA Meteor is the missile the KF-21 is expected to carry for now, with the first production aircraft to be fitted with the European-made weapon and delivered to the Air Force on Sept. 22.

Now the country is trying to bring that firepower home. A 1.9 trillion won ($1.4 billion) tender to build the KF-21's long-range air-to-air missile has attracted two parties: Hanwha Aerospace and a team of Hyundai Rotem and LIG D&A.

The Agency for Defense Development (ADD),  a state-run research institute under the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), is due to name a preferred bidder in October and finalize the decision by year-end. Whoever wins has until December 2033 to finish development.

Korea is localizing long-range air-to-air missiles because it has little control over the ones it relies on now.

Every Meteor is bought from abroad, which means the supplier decides how many the Air Force can hold, when they arrive and what they cost. Building the missile at home would also allow Korea to modify it later, produce more on short notice and sell it along with the fighter.

"Korea develops a lot of its own weapons, but warplane missiles are one of the areas where it has not," said Jang Won-joon, an associate professor specializing in the defense industry at Jeonbuk National University. "It has been a weak area, so the aim is to replace imports and to export as well."

Choi Gi-il, a professor of military studies at Sangji University, said the missile matters to a fighter program that is less Korean than its name suggests. "The basic DNA of a fighter jet is the weapons system it carries, and the core of that is the air-to-air missile, which we have not localized," he said.

The missile Korea wants will use a ducted ramjet engine. A conventional rocket motor burns out within seconds, and the missile coasts the rest of the way, arriving slow and easy to dodge. A ducted ramjet has no compressor or turbine. It burns fuel using air compressed by the missile's own speed, so it still has thrust when it reaches the target. The Meteor is the only air-to-air missile of this kind in service anywhere, and Korea has never built one.

The two bidders are selling different expertise and experience. Hanwha Aerospace has spent two decades on ramjet propulsion, the part of the missile that has never been built in Korea. Hyundai Rotem and LIG D&A have worked on the KF-21's weapons and argue that the harder job is making every component work together on a supersonic aircraft.

Hanwha claims to be the only Korean company that controls the full value chain of ducted ramjet propulsion, from raw material synthesis to component manufacturing. It says it ran five of the government’s six ducted ramjet research projects awarded since 2021, though it declined to identify them or their sponsoring agencies, citing security. "We prepared this proposal with the goal of being selected as the preferred bidder for systems integration," said a Hanwha Aerospace spokesperson, referring to the package that pulls all the pieces together.

The other camp has divided the project between the two companies. Hyundai Rotem said it has taken “the leading role in [the missile’s] propulsion and airframe structure," noting that the project “is proceeding with Rotem leading and LIG cooperating."

On a preliminary ducted ramjet contract it won for the missile last year, Hyundai Rotem said the project "is currently under way" and that the company is "at the stage of having sufficiently secured the technology." The company also works on dual-mode engines for hypersonic flight, which it said require more advanced technology than a ducted ramjet.

LIG D&A is handling the seeker, the guidance and control that steer the missile onto its target, and the work of combining every part into one weapon. "The key in developing an air-to-air guided weapon lies in how each completed technology is organically integrated and made to perform reliably in an extreme supersonic flight environment," the company said. It is also developing the KF-21's short-range air-to-air missile under ADD.

Which version of the KF-21 will actually carry the missile remains unknown. ADD declined to say which block the weapon is intended for, referring the question to DAPA. The Air Force is due to receive 40 Block I aircraft through 2028 and 80 Block II aircraft through 2032, both before the missile's development ends.

The contract won’t be awarded as one prize. It has been split into 12 packages whose contents and budgets ADD said are classified for security reasons. "It is a structure in which contracts are concluded for each subtask," DAPA said. "Each task will be carried out individually and then integrated."

ADD said it is directly managing the systems integration company and the other companies, and that it is handling the connections between them as well. Whoever wins systems integration will report to ADD rather than direct the other contractors.

The capability to meet the delivery deadline is also a critical factor. "Compared with similar weapon systems abroad, eight years to the 2033 development deadline is already a tight schedule," LIG D&A said. "More than half of it is set aside for test and evaluation, including carriage integration tests and flight tests, so the time left to actually build a prototype and mount it on the Boramae is only about three years."

DAPA said the schedule is unchanged, and that the long-range air-to-air missile research program is included in the 2027 government budget proposal. "The first planned quantity of Meteor missiles is scheduled to be introduced, and the second batch is proceeding as planned," the agency said.

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [[email protected]]