The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper

リンク: The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper.

Seoul seeks to buy American spy planes
	The Defense Ministry plans to repeat its request for the purchase of four unmanned surveillance aircraft from the United States during security talks later this month, a Seoul official said yesterday. The U.S. government has rejected previous requests from Seoul, "During the SPI session, we are again planning to ask the United States to permit the sales of the unmanned aerial vehicle Global Hawk," the official said, requesting anonymity. SPI is a bimonthly Security Policy Initiative meeting between the two countries, and the upcoming round of talks will be held for two days from Sept. 27 in Washington. However, the official said the sales request will be made informally instead of being included in official agenda items. "We will stress our need for this unmanned aircraft during the meeting, and ask for U.S. cooperation on the matter," he said. The U.S. unmanned surveillance plane Global Hawk The Global Hawk is a $45-million unmanned surveillance plane used by the U.S. Air Force. It can cruise at a high-altitude of 20 kilometers for up to 42 hours. The high-tech UAV can also identify 30-centimeter-size materials on the ground as well as provide geographic images of areas up to 3,000 kilometers wide. Since last year, the Seoul government has sought to purchase four Global Hawks from the United States in an effort to enhance domestic surveillance capabilities. This is in line with its plans to recover wartime operational control from the United States by 2012. It hopes to acquire the aircraft from 2008. But Washington has refused the sales over concerns of a possible leak of technology related to the high-stakes transaction. Korea relies on the United States for a large portion of aerial intelligence. The Korean government again filed a written request last month to the U.S. Department of Defense, but the Pentagon has given no answer yet. In the face of persistent U.S. refusals, some Korean analysts argue that it is a reflection of "apparent rifts" in the Korea-U.S. alliance, comparing U.S. endorsements of the aircraft sales to other allies such as Japan and Australia. They say Washington is set to downgrade its military ties with Seoul through export controls of such strategically sensitive weapons. The Korean military has developed low-altitude surveillance planes as part of its ambitions to upgrade intelligence, and also plans to begin developing a medium-altitude spy plane this year. It hopes to complete the project by 2016. (davidpooh@heraldm.com) By Jin Dae-woong 2006.09.11