Free Republic

The U.S. Air Force is considering deploying an up-to-date airborne communications network system in South Korea in an effort to boost its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities against North Korean threats, the top American airman here said Friday. In a speech at a security conference in Seoul, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Remington, commander of the 7th Air Force, said his command is exploring the deployment of the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) in the Korean theater, as the network system's effectiveness has been proven in Afghanistan. BACN is an airborne communications relay and gateway that enables real-time information flow between different...

The U.S. Air Force has ordered 160 AGM-158 JASSM air-to-ground missiles. These will cost about $1.5 million each, and several dozen of them will be shipped off to South Korea, which expected to get them last year. JASSM has been delayed due to test failures. However, tests late last year were over 90 percent successful. That kind of good news has arrived just in time. For the last three years, the U.S. Department of Defense has been on the verge of cancelling the $6 billion JASSM cruise missile program. Lobbying, pleading, a large order from South Korea, and the growing...

South Korea has given the production go-ahead for the first 70 Hongsangeo anti-submarine torpedoes for deployment between 2010 and 2012, the government has said. Up to 70 of the long-range ship-to-submarine light torpedoes, called Red Shark in English, will be operational aboard some of South Korea's newest country's destroyers, the KDX-I/II, according to the procurement agency Defense Acquisition Program Administration. After nine years of development, the final tests were completed earlier this year, the DAPA's sister organization the state-funded Agency for Defense Development announced in June. Deployment is in response to a growing threat from North Korean submarines, the ADD...