South Korea plans to spend more budget on boosting its missile defense program in order to counter North Korea’s move of escalating missile capability, the Ministry of National Defense said on Aug 15.
Under the midterm defense budget plan, the South Korean military will spend about $240 billion, representing an annual defense budget increase of 7 percent over the 2020-2024 period. Apart from this, around $85 billion would be spent on arms production, marking a 10.3 percent per year increase for the next five years.
To evolve its low-tier missile capabilities, called the Korea Air and Missile Defense system (KAMD), South Korea is heading to recruit two more ground-based anti-missile early warning radars and three Aegis-equipped destroyers.
“The missile defense system is to have a larger defense area with increased intercept capabilities,” the ministry revealed in a statement. “By upgrading the Patriot and Cheolmae II missile systems, along with the ongoing development of L-SAM, we will establish a multi-layered defense capability enough to intercept new types of North Korean short-range ballistic missiles more effectively,” it added.
L-SAM refers to a domestically developed long-range surface-to-air missile system currently under development, while the Cheolmae II, also known as KM-SAM, is also a locally manufactured medium-range surface-to-air missile capable of targeting an incoming threat at an altitude as high as 20 kilometers.
South Korea has also stationed several batteries of upgraded Patriot Advanced Capability-2 or PAC-2, defense systems brought from Germany. For upgrades, the country ordered new PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement, or MSE, missiles under a U.S. Foreign Military Sales contract, that cost around $53 million.
“The PAC-3 MSE uses a two-pulse solid rocket motor that increases altitude and range to defend against evolving threats so that the newer missile interceptors are expected to be useful in thwarting the North’s new type of missile threats,” a Ministry’s source revealed.