Ministry of National Defense: "Weapon Deployment Will Not Be Delayed Even If Defense Budget Is Cut"

[Asia Economy Reporter Yang Nak-gyu] The Ministry of National Defense stated that despite the reduction of the defense budget to secure funds for emergency disaster relief payments, "the timing of (military) equipment acquisition or operational deployment is not being delayed."

Kim Il-dong, Director of Defense Policy at the Ministry of National Defense, said at a regular briefing on the 16th, "The criteria for selecting budget cuts related to the supplementary budget were mainly focused on overseas procurement projects in order to foster and protect the domestic defense industry."

Earlier, the government prepared a supplementary budget of 7.6 trillion won to provide emergency disaster relief payments due to the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

To accommodate the supplementary budget, the Ministry of National Defense cut approximately 904.7 billion won from project budgets including F-35 (300 billion won), maritime operation helicopters (200 billion won), and Aegis ships (100 billion won), and returned fuel expenses.

Currently, the second maritime operation helicopter project is reported to have remaining overseas testing and evaluation procedures. After the testing and evaluation are completed, the model will be decided and the contract will be signed.

Lee Young-bin, Director of Planning and Budget at the Ministry of National Defense, commented on the fuel expense return, saying, "With the decline in oil prices, there inevitably will be unused funds overall," and added, "There were many unused funds last year due to reduced training following an investigation into a fighter jet accident."

The Ministry of National Defense judged that about 212 billion won in fuel costs would not be used and cut the budget accordingly. Additionally, the Ministry cut 24 billion won related to the cancellation and reduction of reserve forces training due to COVID-19.

A Ministry of National Defense official added, "Through consultations with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, we made cuts mainly to projects where reductions or cancellations were unavoidable due to COVID-19, without affecting the maintenance of military readiness."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.