May 30,
2008: South Korea is buying 36 recently
retired U.S. AH-64D Apache helicopter gunships. With refurbishment, each would
cost $27 million. That's about half what brand new, similarly equipped Apaches
would cost. South Korea will be replacing elderly AH-1 gunships. The AH-64Ds
would be delivered over the next four years.
South
Korea wanted to develop its own helicopter gunship design, but that would have
been much more costly, and depended on export sales to break even. The locally
designed gunships would end up costing the South Korea Army about three times
what they are paying for the American refurbed choppers. Since aircraft are
constantly rebuilt over their service lives, there's no difference in
performance between new AH-64Ds, and the refurbs. The one difference would be
higher maintenance cost for the refurbs down the line, because some of the
components already had some wear on them when they entered South Korean
service.
Many South
Korean politicians and industry leaders want to go ahead with developing the
Korea Attack Helicopter (KAH) anyway, and get the AH-64Ds mainly to upgrade the
helicopter gunship capability. The first KAH would not be ready for service for
another ten years.
