South Korea Sticks With Pratt &Whitney Over GE for New F-16 Engines

Defense Daily, May 31, 2000

South Korea has selected Pratt & Whitney's [UTX] F100 engine over General Electric's [GE] F110 engine for the country's domestic production of 20 new F-16 aircraft, Pratt & Whitney said yesterday.

The order for 22 engines, which was announced yesterday, is worth more than $60 million to Pratt & Whitney, an industry source said.

The order continues South Korea's long usage of Pratt & Whitney's F100 for its F-16s. The F100 was first selected for South Korea's initial purchase of 40 F-16s from Lockheed Martin [LMT] in 1981. All of South Korea's following 120 F-16s have also used F100s, including the last 72 domestically manufactured KF-16s.

The 20 new KF-16s are being built by South Korea's Korea Aerospace Industry (KAI) under license from Lockheed Martin, while Samsung will manufacture the engines. KAI was formed last October through the merger of the aerospace businesses of Samsung, Daewoo Heavy Industries, and Hyundai.

KAI has recently accepted a bid proposal by Britain's BAE SYSTEMS and Boeing [BA] to acquire a 30 percent stake in the company for about $180 million (Defense Daily, May 18).

In addition to assembly of the engines, Samsung will also be responsible for 40 percent of production, with Pratt & Whitney taking care of 60 percent.

Produced by Samsung Techwin, the engines will be known as F100-STW-229s. GE had been offering its F110-GE-129 for the KF-16s.

The most recent order for Pratt & Whitney's F100-PW-229 was by Israel for its new F-16Is (Defense Daily, Aug. 26).

GE's new high-thrust F110-GE-132 was recently selected to power the United Arab Emirates' new Block 60 F-16s (Defense Daily, March 15).