South Korean Plan To Purchase Additional Taurus Missiles Underway

South Korea plans to buy additional "jamming proof" Taurus air-to-ground guided missiles that can be carried on its F-15K fighters.

"The military has recently decided to acquire 90 more Taurus missiles to further beef up its anti-nuclear and anti-missile capabilities. The process to purchase the additional missiles is underway," Yonhap reported quoting a defense ministry official.

Some 170 Taurus missiles are already scheduled to be deployed with the Air Force. The North's fifth nuclear test last month and continued ballistic missile launches resulted in the additional purchase, the news agency reported.

When the deployment is complete, the Air Force will be the first Asian country to operate fighter jets armed with the advanced German missile system with a 500-kilometer range, the official said.

"Taurus missiles combined with GPS receivers and the flight termination system, or FTS, will be deployed in two to three months with the Air Force," an official from the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) was quoted as saying by Yonhap in its earlier report in August this year.

A military GPS receiver is a radio processor capable of handling navigation equations in order to determine the user position, velocity and precise time, by processing the signal broadcasted by U.S. military GPS satellites. Washington has generally not allowed foreign countries to gain access to the receivers.

South Korea has ordered the Taurus, which is 5.1 meters long and weighs 1,400 kilograms, to deal with evolving North Korean threats.

The system has a 480 kg warhead and can fly as low as 40 ms off the ground at a speed of Mach 0.95 that can allow it to evade enemy radar.