Announcement of the F-X Winner
On 27 March 2002, the Ministry of Defense narrowed the
number of contenders down to two, Boeing and Dassault, while
dropping the Eurofighter Typhoon of a four-nation European
consortium and the Sukhoi Su-35 of Russia’s Rosoboronexport
from the competition.
Although Dassault’s Rafale beat the F-15K by a slim margin
of 1.15 percent in the first round of the competition, a second
round was supposed to take place because the margin was less
than 3 percent, a requirement which had not been clear to all the
competitors beforehand. In the second round meeting, the MoD
examined non-technical policy factors, including defense,
diplomatic and trade partnerships, while excluding all the criteria
of the first phase of evaluation, which were price, combat capability and technology transfer.69 The criteria looked
undoubtedly favorable to Boeing in light of the military alliance
between South Korea and the United States, which has
maintained a military presence of 37,000 US soldiers. If
differences between the best candidate and the runner-up in the
first stage turn out to be within three percentage points, the
ministry will enter a second stage of appraisal that will take into
account political and strategic factors such as national security,
international relations and export potential, officials said.
The ministry said it would give top priority in the second
stage of evaluation to Seoul’s military alliance with the United
States, drawing criticism that its guidelines are biased in favour of
the American Boeing.
