By: Jaroslaw Adamowski
KIELCE, Poland — South Korea is this year’s featured
country of MSPO, Poland’s annual defense industry show, where defense giant
Hanwha Corporation is pitching its flagship K9 self-propelled howitzer to
Eastern European allies.
Jinhwan Jeong, the director of the overseas business
division of Hanwha Land Systems, told Defense News that some of the major
contracts under development in Eastern Europe include the planned howitzer
procurement to Estonia.
“Next year, we want to sign a contract with the Estonian
government,” Jeong said. “We are also … offering the K9 to the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, but talks are at a very early stage.”
Following Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in
2014, numerous Eastern European countries have unveiled plans to purchase
howitzers for their respective armed forces.
The Estonian Ministry of Defence plans to jointly acquire
the howitzers with its Finnish counterpart with whom it already cooperated in
2009 on an air surveillance radar procurement.
“The howitzers were used by the South Korean Army and
they will be overhauled,” Jeong said.
The company representative said the South Korean group is
open to transfers of technology to the howitzer’s potential users among NATO
allies.
Estonia could become another country in the region to
acquire the technology. In 2014, Polish defense company Huta Stalowa Wola
bought a license to fit its Krab self-propelled howitzer with the K9’s chassis.
Last December, the Polish Ministry of Defence signed a deal worth more than 4.6
billion zloty (U.S. $1.29 billion) to purchase 96 Krabs for the country’s land
forces.
Original post: defensenews.com
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