Lockheed to Support S.Korea’s Peace Krypton Surveillance Aircraft

The U.S. Department of Defense today announced a $28 million contract to Lockheed Martin to support South Korea’s Peace Krypton surveillance aircraft.

“Lockheed Martin Corp., Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been awarded a $28,125,918 firm-fixed-price contract with some cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-reimbursable contract line item numbers for follow-on support sustainment of the Republic of Korea Peace Krypton Program,” said a U.S. DoD release.

This contract provides for support of the field service representative, program management, core/field engineering, System Depot Support Facility sustainment, technical manuals sustainment and obsolescence management.

Work is expected to be completed December 31, 2022.

In July, the U.S. State Department approved a possible Foreign Military Sale to Seoul of items and services to extend follow-on support to its Peace Krypton aircraft for $250 million.

The Peace Krypton system is comprised of militarized business jets and ground stations that process data from the aircraft. The mission of the Peace Krypton system program is to collect reconnaissance imagery of selected areas during long range missions using an airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery intelligence collection system.

Seoul’s Peace Krypton “spy plane” is a militarized version of Raytheon's Hawker 800XP, reclassified as an RC-800 Hawker, a mid-size, twin-jet corporate aircraft that has been refurbished into a tactical and intelligence platform. The RC-800's primary mission is to conduct both geospatial and signals intelligence.  Powered by TFE731-5BR engines and typically configured in an eight-seat executive layout, the 800XP has an NBAA IFR range with six passengers of more than 2,500 nm (4,635 km).