SHAH ALAM: The Joneses. Polish media is reporting that the government has signed contracts for the procurement of various arms from South Korea including 1000 K2PL main battle tanks; 679 K9 Self Propelled Howitzers and interestingly for us, 48 Korean Aerospace KAI FA-50 PL light fighters.
The FA-50 order is divided in two batches; 12 in the current Block 10 version and supposedly to be delivered by 2023 and the other 36 in the Block 20 version. The Block 20 version supposedly will be equipped with the Northrop Grumman SABR AESA radar; Sniper EO; AIM-9X and AIM-120 missiles and Link 16 data link.
The Block 20 configuration sure seemed to fit RMAF requirements for its future LCA. The big order from Poland – the biggest so far – however does put our supposedly delivery deadline – in 2025 – under a big question mark. Will KAI be bothered with us or will spend more time on its bigger customer, one which might pay in cash instead of haggling over the barter payment? Or we will be buying a completely different aircraft?
Another thing to highlight of the Polish deal for the FA-50 – so far – does not include any transfer or technology or even local assembly (apart from the planned upgrade work for the 12 Block 10 will be upgraded to Block 20 in Poland). Local assembly is part of the deal for the K2 and K9 procurement though after the initial batch are procured directly from South Korea.
With a large land based defence industry and the large number of hulls procured, it make sense for Poland to local assemble the K2s and K9s.
But here in Malaysia with an even smaller defence industrial footprint, lower numbers and even lower budget, the mantra is always been TOT and local assembly. It is like we are planning to fail even though the last 30 years had shown that it is not in the national interest to link arms procurement with economic development.
— Malaysian Defence
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If RMAF confirmed 36 aircraft with additional numbers with other purchases includes choper and with guns and tanks for army and corvettes for navy, small to medium budget event with barter deal and tot with small medium defence industry footprint, why not if if it is a real deal...
With so much TOT and local assembly there won't be enough money to buy 36 planes and other stuff. Most of the money will be used to pay for the TOT and other stuff which ultimately lined up the pockets of the cronies and their masters
Read this too earlier on DSA. I am just 'conjecturing' this latest news will expedite the end process of getting the FA50s or Tejas for RMAF what with H2O saying he'll leave it to RMAF to determine the aircraft type and he'll handle the MoF after the purchase is agreed. (At least that's what I thought) And interesting read that the Polish is said to be getting the FA50 Block 20.
Does that mean we won't be footing the development bill of Block 20 as some are saying here if we are the initial users of that Block?
Scheme of things...they don’t care
Yup
1000 main battle tanks? Dang, way to go Poland!
waste money buying blueprint. Don's know for what. Even if we receive the blue print, so what?
"does not include any transfer or technology"
I do think its not that they don't want to but the they are desperate for planes due to Russia and the timelines will not jive with local assembly and whatnot. They do have "an" aviation industry, with PZL Mielec the international assembler for S70i and they upgrade their own Migs.
So Marhalim, let me ask again is it worth defending the local defence industry when the returns are just not there?
https://www.malaysiandefence.com/the-truth-is-plain-to-see/
It is fine to have certain local involvement when there is volume and a consistent buys; ie multi year assemblies of hundreds of armoured vehicles, rifle & small arms making, webbing & clothing, but things like small volume high tech planes or expensive ammos which are not consumed on a consistently regular basis cannot be justified and will just "ultimately lined up the pockets of the cronies and their masters".
There is no consistent buy that's our biggest issue as money is always tight. Furthermore as always only cronies got this kind of gig. What ever other countries do is their own business. Its their money
They are damm rich..ofcz maybe have uncle Sam sponsor to counter the Russian.
"our biggest issue as money is always tight"
Exactly. We don't have enough to spend on yet whatever we spent is not used efficiently so why should we have a parasitic local defence industry? OTOH can our rakyat stomach throwing RM 15-16Bil annually into a blackhole for defence expenditure with no economic returns if we spend efficiently but zero local involvement? Can we hope/expect our selfish selfserving politicians not to politicise such spendings even during such a time as economic tightening today?
@Michael
Nope Poland's GDP is roughly about the same as ours. Relative terms they are not richer nor poorer of course in context of the EU they are less affluent. In reality not all EU countries are "rich" especially those Eastern EU. But indeed the massive purchase is sponsored by Uncle Sam since Poland is a NATO nation and a bulwark to Russia's border.