Swedish Saab company has been awarded a contract to support algorithm development and evaluation for airborne AESA radar programme led by the Korean Agency for Defence Development. 

Saab announced the award on 22 December, revealing the contract value as $15,2 million. The program is part of the Republic of Korea's efforts to develop a domestic fighter aircraft, including relevant avionics equipment such as AESA radar. According to South Korea’s Defence Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), AESA will be flight-tested on a prototype fighter jet for the KF-X, whose development is scheduled to be finished in 2026. The fight test will take place in 2022, DAPA added. 

The KF-X project seeks to produce 120 fighter jets with domestic technology and to deploy them at the South Korean Air Force by 2032. South Korea had decided to develop its own AESA radar system after the US rejected its request to transfer core technologies, including the AESA radar, radio frequency jammer, electronic optics targeting pod, and infrared search and track system, to be applied to the KF-X jets in 2015.