Korea to purchase Taurus missiles

By Kang Seung-woo

Korea has decided to purchase the Taurus air-to-ground standoff cruise missiles for its F-15K fleet in order to counter North Korea’s hostility, the procurement office said, Wednesday.

The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) approved a plan to purchase the bunker-busting missile in a meeting presided by Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin.

The projectile that has a range of 500 kilometers is manufactured by the German-Swedish joint venture Taurus Systems.

However, DAPA, which will shortly be in talks with the developer about the delivery timeline, did not disclose how many missiles it will buy along with its price tag.

The Taurus pick will go down as the nation’s first strategic strike weapon purchased from a non-U.S. supplier.

The decision to choose the European weapon over the U.S.-made JASSM is due to Washington’s refusal to sell the low observable standoff cruise missile by Lockheed Martin, which is classified as a strategic weapon, to Korea.

The military plans to integrate the missile into its F-15K, which can carry two per plane.

Taurus Systems and U.S. defense giant Boeing, the manufacture of the F-15K, have made detailed integration investigations for the aircraft and the result proves that the missile can easily be integrated without any hitches.

The missile is capable of penetrating up to 6 meters of reinforced concrete with an error rate of a mere 3 to 3 meters, making it ideal to take out hard targets such as bunkers, underground installations and bridges.

In addition, the Taurus has three independent navigation systems ― terrain reference-, imaged based-, and GPS-Navigation ― that makes it very robust to GPS jamming.

DAPA said that Korea can safely attack strategic targets with the Taurus missile.

“From the south of the military demarcation line without being under threat, we are capable of hitting targets in enemy territory,” a DAPA official said in a briefing.