In written comments to questions from members of the Senate Armed Services Committee concerning his nomination to replace Gen. B.B. Bell, current director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon Gen. Walter Sharp lobbied for improved missile defense in Sout…

From an article in Dec 2007:

The Defense Ministry is now developing an independent missile defense system called “Korea Air and Missile Defense” (KAMD). It will consist of a battery of PAC-3 missiles, which the ministry is to purchase after the mid-2010s, and a battery of domestically developed medium-range surface-to-air missiles (M-SAM). M-SAMs will reportedly have a shorter range than PAC-3 missiles.

(NOTE: Notice the PAC-3 procurement is in the “mid-2010s” — AFTER the USFK has ceded wartime control.)

Incoming missiles would be detected by Spy-1D radar from Aegis vessels such as the King Sejong-class destroyers, and by a ballistic missile early warning radar system (BMEWS). The Aegis vessels are not armed with interceptor missiles like the SM-3 the U.S. and Japan are jointly developing. But the country plans to purchase shorter-range interceptor missiles in the medium and long term. Military sources say the U.S. and Japan are spending huge amounts of money jointly developing SM-3 missiles, so there is very little chance that they will sell them to South Korea. “Given the small size of the Korean Peninsula, we’ll purchase shorter-range missiles, if the U.S. ever develops them, and deploy them on the Aegis vessels,” one source said.

(NOTE: The ROK has requested SM-3 missiles for its new Aegis destroyers, but the US has not approved their request as yet. The concerns are for the leakage of classified data — as was done in Japan.)

Experts therefore predict it will take until at least 2015 that South Korea will be able to build a full-fledged missile defense system. At the moment, the country cannot join the U.S. missile defense system, but if KAMD is built, it will be linked to the U.S. system in one way or another. If the KAMD system is to function properly, South Korea will have to rely on the U.S.’ missile early warning system, including an early warning satellite that can detect North Korea’s missile launches quickly, and on the so-called battle management command, control, communication, computer and intelligence (BM/C4I) system.

But yeah, the PAC-3 would be a better missile defense system than the PAC-2s.

Also there are rumors that the ROK, under Roh, started the KAMD not because of the NK ballistic missile threat but because it didn’t want the US offering the ROK to join the BMD that it was working on with Japan. You see the previous government figured that if the US mentioned the BMD, it could respond by saying “Hey we already have the KAMD, we don’t need it. So please do not offer it to us”

I JUST WANT TO SEE WHEN ARE THEY GOING FINALLY PUT THE FIRST PATRIOTS IN PLACE… Supposed to be 2007, then 2008, and then??????

After that comes the big question of do we need to send some of our PATRIOT batteries back to Fort Sill and let the ROK start handling some of its own missile defense — something the ROK does NOT want to do.

Stay tuned kids — watch the pea…

According to a local military magazine, Raytheon did submit a quotation for upgrading the second-hand German launchers and associated equipment to handle PAC-3s in addition to new-build PAC-3 missiles. I don’t quite remember the actual $ figure, but I believe it was in the 100 ~ 200 million dollars range. But don’t expect the project to go ahead, because according to the magazine, the ROKAF general staff and the MND blanched when they saw the said quotation.