Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
SEOUL — Four Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Block 30 Global Hawk surveillance aircraft should be delivered to South Korea between 2017 and 2019, acting as a primary sensor in the country’s preparations to hit North Korean missiles before launch. A contract from the U.S. government is likely in 2014, following an intergovernmental agreement by the end of this year, Northrop Grumman officials say, although the South Korean defense ministry expects the intergovernmental contract in the first half of next year.
Curtiss-Wright Controls is working to turn South Korea from a customer to a supplier, exploiting the progress local manufacturers have made in gaining technology. Perhaps the most prominent opportunity is in actuation, the equipment that, for example, moves flight control surfaces, says Curtiss-Wright Controls Vice President Christopher Thomson. “South Korea has been a good market, growing faster than our other segments,” says Curtiss-Wright’s Tom Quinly. “We want to take it to another level.”
South Korea’s government and aerospace industry are persisting with low-level work on the proposed DRA 90-seat turboprop airliner, despite failing to come to an agreement with Bombardier to co-develop the aircraft, a government source tells Aviation Week.
