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The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

politico.com

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Re: The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

#31

Post by tokai »

themafia wrote: post #14
Animats wrote: post #6

Other countries with rising weapons businesses are Ukraine and Iran. The best endorsement for a weapons manufacturer is winning a war against a tough opponent.

That's one of the problems with the lack of diplomacy in the US's position for the past 40 years. We have pushed the envelope beyond our own control: "The U.S. military reverse-engineered Iran’s Shahed-136 loitering munition to create a low-cost, one-way attack drone squadron in the Middle East called LUCAS (Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System)." Necessity is the mother of invention. We spent billions in exchange…

Shahed is already a copy of a German drone. I wonder how many copies of the same drone we are going to end up with.

Re: The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

#32

Post by robocat »

epistasis wrote: post #22
tristanj wrote: post #10

This article uses so many words to focus on the political reasons, but completely ignores the primary driver: Cost. Korean weapons systems are 40-60% cheaper than their American counterparts. The Korean K9 Thunder 155mm self-propelled howitzer costs $3.5 to $4 million per unit. For comparison, the American M109A7 Paladin costs around $8 million. The German PzH 2000 runs approximately $7 to $8 million. The K239 Chunmo…

This is also the case for things like nuclear reactor construction, except South Korea is cheaper by a far higher margin there. Add in the US's latest antics about controlling the use of they weapons they sell, and in addition trying to bully and demean allies, and it's a mystery as to why anybody would ever use US suppliers these days.

  decline of 28.54% [US FMS notifications 2025 cf. 2024]
Although the article is more positive

Emerging Trends in the Trump Approach to Security Cooperation: https://www.stimson.org/2026/emerging-trends-in-the-trump-ap...

Re: The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

#33

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

graeme wrote: post #13
jonnybgood wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just Russia using Iranian drones, but that was already happening. This war with Iran is not really an endorsement of Iranian weapons. The US didn’t stop its offensive because of Iranian weapons. We already knew the effectiveness of one way attack drones just from looking at their employment in Ukraine. The US counter-UAV industry might start seeing some exponential growth. There’s a lot of lessons learned for th…

>The US didn’t stop its offensive because of Iranian weapons. I would say they did. Gulf countries ran out of missile and drone defenses and a lot of infrastructure was getting hit. Long run loss of capacity here would be worse than temporary strait closure and there were a lot of assets left to hit.

There has already been significant infrastructure capacity destruction. Hard to get an inventory on exactly what, but even if there were an actual peace agreement with full strait traversal, it will be years to resume previous production numbers. Qatar lost LNG trains and facilities which are estimated at 3-5 years to replace.

Just restoring shut in oil wells will take months. It is unlikely all wells will ever reach previous output levels.

Re: The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

#34

Post by yongjik »

Due to the geopolitical situation, South Korean military has invested a crazy amount of resources on firepower. It has 2,780 self-propelled artillery vehicles, which is number #3 in the world (after Russia and China). The US (#4) has 1,521.

For a random comparison, Poland has 593 and Germany has 134.

(source: https://www.globalfirepower.com/armor-self-propelled-guns-to... )

...that is, (depending on what you want) South Korea has proven experience in building a ton of military equipment on time. Also, due to the dreadful climate of Korean peninsula, if something works in Korea, it will work pretty much everywhere except for desert (and maybe the arctic).

Re: The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

#36

Post by abixb »

The Australian Military Aviation History channel on YouTube has a series of two fantastic videos on South Korea's KF-21 "Borame" program, and it also touches quite a bit on South Korean defense industrial base as a whole. [0][1]

As a military aviation enthusiast , I couldn't be happier that there seems to be a lot more diversity in military hardware developments, especially in close to state-of-the-art fighter jets, such as China's J-20/J-35, Turkey's KAAN, the GCAP/FCAS program, etc, with Dassault working on critical upgrades to current Rafales as well.

Global South countries have a lot more options for close to cutting edge military hardware than they had even a decade or two ago to close the gap with the West.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wFL0eRJVGQ

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6X5zuthz-s

Re: The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

#37

Post by beloch »

"South Koreans are hoping to change that with a $60 billion submarine deal Hanwha Ocean is trying to sign with Canada; it would be the largest military procurement deal in Ottawa’s history. But the peninsula faces a formidable opponent in Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, which has a long track record of producing submarines for NATO countries. Canada is expected to announce the winning company later in June — which means the South Korean government and Hanwha still have a little time to lobby Ottawa — but the odds look increasingly slim, according to Kim, the president of SMI."

--------------

What's interesting about the German/Korean bids to build subs for Canada is that both countries are offering package deals that include building other military vehicles and parts in Canada. This isn't just going to be a one-time purchase of military goods. The deal, whichever country gets it, will, ideally, kick-start long-term cooperation. The Canadian government seems to want what they used to have with the U.S., only with more reliable partners that won't regularly threaten their sovereignty.

This isn't so much a rise of SK's weapons business as it is the rise of a new, integrated military supply chain centred around NATO and close allies, but with a deliberate move away from U.S. suppliers.

Re: The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

#38

Post by XorNot »

nine_k wrote: post #8
bell-cot wrote: post #2

Maybe HN should ban words matching "surpris" from Titles? Even if you are clueless about the international arms trade - South Korea has maintained a huge military for the past 70-ish years, as part of their endless cold war with North Korea. And South Korea has been really big on manufacturing and exporting all sorts of stuff for the past half-ish-century. Why the hell wouldn't they be selling the military things tha…

There are, sadly, many places of conflicts smoldering for years; not all of them, if any, ended up in production of exportable weapons. E.g. Taiwan is preparing for a PRC invasion for decades; did it produce exportable weapons systems? So there is an element of surprise. Maybe not as large as North Korea exporting ballistic missiles to Russia [1], but still. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/25/how-nort…

The problem is there's a lot of analysis which does try to apply a generalist template to different parts of the world and it invariably leads to bad conclusions if you don't consider the local differences properly.

Taiwan for example unlike SK has the problem that the entire island is within range of China, so unlike the SK situation where Seoul would have problems but you're still looking at having some meaningful rear areas out of range, Taiwan doesn't have that - the entire strategy ultimately depends on being a tough enough nut to crack for a few weeks that allies can jump in or China gets cold feet about it.

In a protracted conflict there's nowhere you'd be able to build up local replacements - Ukraine is gigantic by comparison.

You see this same planning on many of the Baltics who aren't Poland: the plan isn't to win, it's to hold on long enough that NATO can't credibly decide it's already over and stay out.

Re: The rise of South Korea’s weapons business

#39

Post by thephyber »

ReptileMan wrote: post #19
tristanj wrote: post #10

This article uses so many words to focus on the political reasons, but completely ignores the primary driver: Cost. Korean weapons systems are 40-60% cheaper than their American counterparts. The Korean K9 Thunder 155mm self-propelled howitzer costs $3.5 to $4 million per unit. For comparison, the American M109A7 Paladin costs around $8 million. The German PzH 2000 runs approximately $7 to $8 million. The K239 Chunmo…

The majority of military hardware costs are bribes, kickbacks and margins. Nobody thinks that they will fight a real war in which they will need a lot of hardware. If the US or Germany get in situation they need thousands of those - I guess their cost will fall to under 1M.

Do you have any evidence of this?

Also “and margins” seems like a stupid thing to add. Margins are high during peacetime and wartime alike. And it’s not parallel to bribes / kickbacks which are corrupt and illegal. Margins are the natural outcome of capitalism + monopoly.

Having S Korean competition means those margins would likely drop over time.

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