EADS offers investments to develop Korean indigenous fighter programme

By offering an investment of $2 billion and joint development if South Korea picks the Eurofighter Typhoon, seen here in Spanish colours, EADS says it expected “to cause a shock wave in Korea.”

Following Eurofighter's promise to assemble 53 Eurofighters in Korea if the aircraft is selected as Korea's next generation fighter, global aerospace company EADS said that it will “invest $2 billion and its technology in the KF-X to help Korea to become a fighter jet producer.”

If Eurofighter produces 53 out of 60 fighter jets in Korea and EADS invests $2 billion in the KF-X programme, the industrial and economic impacts is expected to be monumental. The Eurofighter programme secures more than 1,00,000 jobs in 400 companies in Europe.

If the assembly of Eurofighter and the KF-X programme are conducted at the same time, it will bring economic effect worth dozens of trillions of KRW and create 50,000 jobs in Korea. The development of the Korean Utility Helicopter, SURION, by KAI which secured technology from Eurocopter is a recent successful case of collaboration between Korea and EADS. The SURION raised Korea to the 11th helicopter manufacturer in the world. The SURION brought technical effect worth about 14 trillion KRW and created more than 25,000 jobs in Korea.

In addition, Airbus, one of EADS subsidiaries, has chosen KAI as the supplier of main parts of Airbus aircraft from 1998.