SEOUL (Yonhap) -- South Korea has decided to purchase 40 F-35A fighter jets from the U.S. defense firm Lockheed Martin in a deal worth 7.3 trillion won (US$7.04 billion), the state arms procurer said Wednesday.Under the purchase deal, Lockheed Martin will transfer fighter production technologies in 17 sectors to be used for South Korea's project to develop an indigenous next-generation fighter jet, the South Korean Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said.
"We held negotiations from March to September on technology, price and trade-off conditions and decided to adopt 40 units even under the limited conditions of the (state-to-state) foreign military sales (FMS) process," a DAPA spokesman said. "The purchase price per unit is around 120 billion won."
After signing a formal deal with the U.S. later this month, the military will push to deploy the new combat planes from 2018 to 2021, he noted. The purchase program is designed to replace South Korea's aging fleet of F-4 and F-5 fighter jets.
Also on Wednesday, DAPA finalized a plan to produce an indigenous next-generation fighter. Under the 8.5 trillion won project, the military will manufacture 120 units of an upgraded middle-size fighter jet to be deployed from 2025, the spokesman added.