If I was going to stereotype, one thing I learned from Korea is that the people can have a short temper.
So when I read in today's Australian Financial Review (AFR), "Howitzer bombshell angers South Korea", (Geoffry Barker), my first thought was that this was not the kind of business partner to leave in the lurch.
S.Korean defence industry was rightly upset when they heard of the cancellation of the Australian self-propelled artillery project (to be made in S.Korea) by radio news with no forewarning. The South Korean embassy was informed 20 minutes before the public announcement.
Did I just mention "upset"? Furious would be a better description. Business reprisal in some form from S.Korea is a guarantee.
Aside from the idea if Australia even needs this kind of weapon's system, officials made this cancellation decision as part of an effort to save money. Even though gross excess like 22,000 defence civilian employees, a war in Afghanistan that provides no defensive value to the nation, too many flag-ranks and SES and a spend-thrift buying policy still exist.
S.Korea offers a lot of potential defence industry solutions for land, sea and air. How the future Australian-S. Korean defence industry relationship progresses is an open question.
5 comments:
who? what? upset from Korean side... no one upset exporting the canine, even industry side. be cool, eric.
Anon I would believe most vendors engaging with Australia would be totally pissed at the total unprofessional behaviour of Defence.
Mind the (air-sea) gap... All else is secondary.
If Australia ever falls back to the sea-air gap, it's screwed.
Korean side has right to be upset about the 20 min advanced notice before it went public. That's lacking respect, more than the decision to cancel. BTW, was there any cancellation fee clause in the original contract? Maybe that's something Korea will evaluate as being protocol going forward, as they receive increasing demand for their defense-technical services and sales?
Another frustration Korean govt faces in busted contracts includes their next-generation Geographical remote sensing satellite which was contracted to be launched by a Russian joint venture space launch company back in 2011, to which considerable down-payment has already been paid (and probably end up being sunk-costs). Despite pleas to Russian Federal Space Agency to expedite the appropriate permits to launch, Korea is now apparently being given the go around by Russian Federation govt itself (exercising rank over the joint-venture launch company) and being asked to buy a new sole-sourced Russian launcher if they want to launch in the next 6 months!
On that score, SpaceX with Falcon class launchers (and equivalent serious private launch corporations) will probably be looking in higher demand given reliability and credibility in the future.
But regarding Korean-made deals w/ Australia, perhaps the self-propelled artillery was not an actual prudent or prioritized acquisition at this time and it was fairly cancelled. Perhaps then, as part of good-relations, RAN could seek refurb work on Collins class from Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (they seem to be pretty good at refurbishing Type 209/214 eg)? Perhaps also request sale of an alternative weapon system, such as 'Red-Shark' ASROC torpedo?
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