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 — BAE Systems has begun work on the upgrade program for South Korea’s Lockheed Martin F-16s in advance of a contract signing expected by the end of the year.
South Korean aerospace and defense company LIG Nex1, preparing for the KF-X fighter program, is planning to build a demonstrator X-band radar with an active, electronically scanned array (AESA). The technology is also aimed at a future South Korean frigate program, an industry official says.
SEOUL — Commercial viability is increasingly dominating work on South Korea’s next helicopter, which, having begun as an military program, will now aim first to build a civil rotorcraft and then fashion a military version from it. A committee chaired by Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin is due to meet in mid-November to decide whether to go ahead next year with full-scale development of the Light Civil Helicopter and Light Armed Helicopter (LCH-LAH) program.
