{"id":2196772,"date":"2022-06-13T19:02:49","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T10:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nknews.org\/pro\/?p=2196772"},"modified":"2023-04-05T16:12:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T07:12:17","slug":"why-iron-dome-and-one-aircraft-carrier-provide-limited-benefits-for-south-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koreapro.org\/2022\/06\/why-iron-dome-and-one-aircraft-carrier-provide-limited-benefits-for-south-korea\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Iron Dome and an aircraft carrier provide limited benefits for South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

An aircraft carrier will provide limited military benefits for South Korea, while an indigenous Iron Dome-like system is unlikely to provide comprehensive defense against North Korean threats, the military specialist Bruce Bennett told <\/span>Korea Pro<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Bennett said South Korea\u2019s decision to develop a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile fits with its practice of pursuing technologies with dual-use applications that can provide Seoul with both civil and military benefits.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a wide-ranging interview with <\/span>Korea Pro,<\/span><\/i> Bennett \u2014 a defense researcher at RAND Corporation \u2014 also shared his thoughts on South Korea\u2019s strengths as an exporter of military equipment and its ability to undercut U.S. competition with less expensive conventional arms.<\/span><\/p>\n

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/span><\/i>
\n<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

Korea Pro: Do you think pursuing the development of an indigenous South Korean aircraft carrier is a realistic goal for the new administration?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bennett:<\/b> I don’t know for sure with the Yoon administration. But the real question is: What does a carrier buy you? Because one carrier buys you a carrier that’s on station maybe a third of the time or a little bit more because it’s in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n

So you’ve got to be thinking about what you really get by getting just one. You look at the U.S. and we buy enough carriers so that we’ve always got about a third of the force out, but two-thirds of the force are either in maintenance, sometimes deep maintenance, and in training.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So what do you buy with one carrier? Well, you buy some political capabilities. You might buy some military capabilities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And here’s one of the problems the South Koreans have. They have 12 fighter airfields, 12 combat airfields. That’s it. They don’t have a significant dispersal system. Now you think of the Cold War in Europe in the 80s, both Soviets and the NATO forces. We had dispersal airfields for all of our fighter bases. It was just the way we went. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>South Korea used to have 10 highway landing strips 20 years ago: the toll road headed south from Seoul — that big toll road on the southern end of it — had control towers, pull-offs for maintenance of aircraft. They literally landed aircraft there regularly for training purposes. But it’s all gone now.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a sense that they didn’t face a serious threat, and the economics were such that if you could sell that land for development, you were going to make some bucks. But there were 10 highway landing strips. We’re getting very close to there being zero, and it really should be working the other way around.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Bruce Bennett speaks to Korea Pro at the Asan Symposium in June 2022 | Image: Asan Institute for Policy Studies<\/p><\/div>\n

Korea Pro: Yoon has committed to developing a Korean Iron Dome on an accelerated timeline by 2026. Do you think it\u2019s realistic? And also why not just buy it from Israel?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bennett: <\/b>Well, the Korean perception has always been that if we produce it, we’re going to be able to make it for less, especially with regard to U.S. military equipment. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>So with the KF-16, what did they do? They bought a few from the U.S., and then they got licensed production and they built their own. And I suspect they probably saved a third or so on each aircraft.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I remember it, they got an Iron Dome or two from the Israelis. I could be wrong, but I think that was the case. And then I think they probably did the reverse engineering or licensed engineering — I don’t know which — and developed it. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>Can they get it that quickly? Koreans are pretty good at fielding things. But the challenge they face is with the Iron Dome is it was designed to defend against a thin offense. What the Koreans have to defend against is a thick artillery offense.<\/span><\/p>\n

So they have a choice: Are they going to field enough to protect certain locations? You’ve probably seen up close to the Demilitarized Zone, there’s an LG factory, an absolutely huge factory. Well, I mean, they could put one there to defend that factory, but it’s not going to defend everywhere around there. It’s going to have limited coverage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And one of the things they’re probably doing is extending the range of that coverage — because they’re not facing the narrow problem the Israelis do. So you have a different problem, you build your own.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But overall, the problem is if you’ve got 400, 240-millimeter multiple rocket launchers (MRLs) that are each firing 20 rockets — and roughly speaking the Iron Dome has 40 interceptors — you need one of those for every two North Korean launchers. And South Korea is not going to be able to afford that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Korea Pro: Why does South Korea need a <\/b>solid-fuel rocket launch capability<\/b><\/a>?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Bennett: <\/b>Well, South Korea has always tried to pursue dual-use.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They started building fighter aircraft because there were a lot of technologies in fighter aircraft that they could carry over to commercial. They weren’t going to use a fighter aircraft for commercial purposes directly, but avionics, lots of things like that would carry over potentially.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So they’ve always been anxious to keep commercial and military efforts, technology-wise, close together, because then you get the synergy of pursuing that. Consequently, they’re going to pursue systems where they think there’s a dual opportunity.<\/span><\/p>\n

And when you talk about a satellite, yes, you could make it a liquid-fuel satellite, but if it’s solid fuel, you can set the missile up and you launch it and you don’t have to worry about fueling it. You put it in a silo, you put a satellite on top of it, and all you have to do is pull back the door of the silo and launch it. Well, the U.S. did exactly that back in the Cold War. We had special satellites designed to assist with command control in wartime, and they were located at a particular air base, sitting in a regular silo on a regular Minuteman missile, ready to put a satellite up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

An F-16 jet takes off during a routine training event at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea on March 24, 2021 | Image: U.S. Indo-Pacific Command<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Korea Pro: What are some of the key growth areas that you’re seeing in terms of South Korea’s conventional exports?<\/b>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

Bennett: <\/b>On the air force, they wanted to export pretty much anything. But where they found the real market is the T-50 and the FA-50 variant. Because what they did was they took the F-16, which was a medium-level fighter, they stepped down a little bit for it from it and made it much less expensive so they could use it as a trainer, but put enough capability on it so that it’s a low-end attack aircraft. And that worked great.<\/span><\/p>\n

They’ve clearly wanted to focus on the heavy armor for the ground forces \u2014 whether it’s tanks or artillery. They have also been talking about some naval surface ship exports.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They’ve been kind of looking across the board. From my understanding, the logic in Korea is \u201cThe more you make, the less they cost.\u201d So you do a bunch of exports, you gain influence politically, but you also reduce the cost to your military.<\/span><\/p>\n

Korea Pro: What are South Korea\u2019s strengths in terms of conventional arms?<\/b><\/p>\n

Bennett: <\/b>They look for a niche. American equipment is so expensive, so they were asking: \u201cCan we go and maintain much of the capability of an American-like force, but do so at a fairly significantly reduced price?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But South Korea doesn’t go to the ultimate ground floor, however. They’re not trying to just put out low-end rifles or something like that. They’re trying to put out real military capabilities — not just bottom of the line but lower than what would be among the U.S. Systems — but also for a substantially lower cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that’s very attractive in Asia and the Middle East in particular, because the U.S. is very costly on a lot of our equipment that we sell overseas. So they’ve been able to sell much of it,\u00a0 sometimes, I suspect where the U.S. government wasn’t exactly excited, but in any case, they were able to do that, and that has really given them a niche for exports.<\/span><\/p>\n

Edited by Bryan Betts<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Defense & Security<\/span><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An aircraft carrier will provide limited military benefits for South Korea, while an indigenous Iron Dome-like system is unlikely to provide comprehensive defense against North Korean threats, the military specialist Bruce Bennett told Korea Pro. 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