Boeing’s F-15 Silent Eagle and European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS)’s Eurofighter Tranche 3 Typhoon came in the given budget of the F-X program, an industry source said, Friday.
According to the source, Boeing and the EADS met the procurement price of 8.3 trillion won ($7.5 billion) at the final day of an additional three-day auction for purchase of 60 “next-generation” fighter jets.
The other combat plane, which was up against the F-15 and the Eurofighter, is Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II within the Air Force program to purchase 60 combat planes to switch its obsolete fleet of F-4s and F-5s.
The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) also admitted that there’s a minimum of one that satisfied the procurement price, but declined to announce what percentage aircraft closed the worth gap citing the continued procedure.
“As there have been companies that offered price in the program budget, we can proceed to the next move,” DAPA Spokesman Baek Youn-hyeong said in a press briefing.
DAPA will shortly evaluate all three fighter jets before a committee meeting, presided over by Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin, picks a winner next month. No specific date was confirmed.
However, the procurement agency added that although all three aircraft can be under assessment, any aircraft that exceeds the budget is probably not signed for the F-X contract.
There is an opportunity that there’ll be no winner according to the evaluation, in addition.
Starting on June 18, DAPA held a complete of 55 bidding sessions for 3 weeks, but all competitors did not satisfy the budget requirements and in consequence, DAPA temporarily suspended the project on July 5.
If it were no firm which closed the cost gap, DAPA would have declared the bid a failure and reconsidered this system from scratch.
The F-35 stealth jet was seen because the favorite from the start of the project given South Korean Air Force’s long pursuit of stealth fighter jets that could go through North Korea’s complex web of radars and given the close relations between Korea and the U.S., the house country of Boeing.
But the corporate cannot lower its bid, on account that the U.S. government is unable to supply a hard and fast price since the stealth jet remains being manufactured and simultaneously tested.
In addition, the Park Geun-hye administration is that specialize in funding 135 trillion won in welfare spending, so the Ministry of Strategy and Finance reportedly rejected DAPA’s demand the cheap increment after failing to locate a bidder who placed bids within budget constraints.
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