ROK to spend $1.4 bln in 2017 to develop homegrown anti-missile system

SEOUL - The Republic of Korea (ROK) plans to spend 1.58 trillion won (1.43 billion US dollars) next year to develop its homegrown anti-missile system amid rising nuclear and missile threats from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Seoul's defense ministry and arms procurement agency submitted such plan for 2017 defense budget, including missile defense development costs, to the National Assembly on Tuesday, according to ROK's Yonhap news agency.

The 2017 costs allotted to develop so-called Kill Chain and Korea Air & Missile Defense (KAMD) systems was up 3.8 percent from 2016 to prepare for growing DPRK nuclear and missile threats, Yonhap said.

The military will invest 533.1 billion won into the KAMD project next year, up 40.5 percent from this year. The KAMD is a project to develop its indigenous missile defense system to shoot down incoming DPRK missiles at multiple layers.

The project includes the development of interceptors, including medium-range surface-to-air missiles (M-SAM) and long-range surface-to-air missiles (L-SAM) that can shoot down missiles at an altitude of less than 100 km.

Among the KAMD budget, 283.7 billion won will be spent to upgrade PAC-2 US missiles already deployed in South Korea. Seoul's military has a plan to replace some of PAC-2 missiles with advanced PAC-3 US missiles as part of the KAMD project by 2022.

The L-SAM development project will get a budget of 114.1 billion won next year, more than doubling this year's 37.6 billion won.

The Kill Chain project, which aims to preemptively strike the DPRK's missile launch sites when signs of first strike are detected, will receive 1.05 trillion won as budget next year.

It was down 8.4 percent from this year as many parts of the development project entered into a final stage, according to the Yonhap report.

Seoul's military plans to start the development of its homegrown reconnaissance satellites next year to better spot the moves of DPRK missiles, allocating 74 billion won to the project in 2017. It was sharply up from 2 billion won for this year.