A Political Dogfight On the Korean Front.(Brief Article)

South Korea calls it Project FX: a plan to buy 40 next-generation jet fighters to defend the last cold-war front. Boeing is the assumed front runner to get the $4 billion contract, relying on American ties to the Seoul military establishment that go back to the Korean War. But a diplomatically agile European consortium is coming up fast, as is its French partner. The decision, due in September, isn't really a battle over firepower. "Differences between the jet fighters wouldn't matter much," says Ji Man Won, a retired Army officer who now runs a military think tank. "In the end, the decision will have to be political."

The maneuvers in this dogfight shadow the intense politics of the global defense industry. Boeing has launched its war-tested F-15 against the cutting-edge but untested European Typhoon and French-built Rafale. The winner will grab a commanding place in the post-cold-war arms market. Defeat is almost unthinkable to Boeing, because U.S. companies have dominated fighter sales to South Korea. A victory for Eurofighter would be critical to the aim of the year-old European aerospace consortium European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) to challenge American defense contractors. Victory for the Rafale, built by Dassault, would sustain France's ambition to build its own weapons, and that may be an advantage. There is a feeling among some Koreans that France is their model: a middle-size nation with a major arms industry, independent of big countries. Seoul's stated aim is to become an aerospace powerhouse by 2015.

The politicking has been intense--and may not have helped Boeing's cause. When a senior Boeing executive recently visited with the chiefs of the South Korean Army, Navy and Air Force, Seoul lawmakers complained that the chiefs were supposed to be neutral. When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell then sang the praises of the ...