The US suspected that S. Korea had illegally disassembled the Tiger Eye pod on an F-15K fighter jet for the purpose of stealing the technology for low-altitude night penetration attacks.
The Tiger Eye is a navigation and targeting pod attached below the F-15K’s fuselage to enable the jet to fly at low altitudes to avoid radar detection and launch attacks with precision-guided munitions at night and in bad weather.
The chief of the U.S. Defense Technology Security Administration raised the suspicion in an early June meeting that Korea illegally disassembled Tiger Eye for the purpose of learning its advanced technology, said an official with the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) Monday. As an increasingly sophisticated supplier of arms on the global market, S. Korea competes against US arms manufacturers in various segments.
Tiger Eye is a more advanced system than the LANTIRN system attached to the KF-16 which S. Korea had purchased before buying the F-15K. To avoid revealing the Tiger Eye technology the US seals the pod before exporting it. Its sales contract stipulates that the pod can’t be disassembled.
The US said one unit sent by the Korean Air Force to the US for maintenance and repair showed signs of the seal having been broken, the pod disassembled and reassembled.
The suspicion is based on S. Korea’s history of reverse-engineering US-made weapons during the 1980s to develop its own weapons. But the practice was thought to have ended since the 1990s.
Based on the suspicions Korea and the US conducted a weeklong joint investigation from Sept. 18. The probe failed to turn up solid evidence that Korea had disassembled the Tiger Eye.
“The U.S. tentatively concluded that the Korean Air Force had not illegally mishandled the equipment,” said a DAPA official. “It doesn’t seem likely that the U.S. will put restrictions on Korea’s exports of military equipment.”
The US has restricted Korea’s exports of weapons like the K-1 tanks built with US technological support.
