By ANDREW CHUTER
SINGAPORE — With a substantial contract under its belt to upgrade South Korea’s fleet of Lockheed Martin F-16s, BAE Systems is now looking to extend its activities in the market for modifying other nations’ aircraft by looking at Boeing’s F-15 and F/A-18 jets, said executives from the US arm of the British-based company.
BAE returned to the Singapore Airshow for the first time in years, hoping that a local program to update F-16s might be thrown open to competition rather handed to aircraft builder Lockheed Martin, as looks the case right now.
Buoyed by the recent signing of a $2.4 billion deal to act as systems integrator for upgrading 130 KF-16 fighters for South Korea, John Bean, the vice president for global fighter programs at BAE in the US, said if given the chance the company, would look to repeat the success in Singapore as well as attempting to land an upgrade deal on the two Boeing-built fighters.
“We have made initial inquiries in Japan where they are formulating their [F-2 and F-15] requirements at this point. All the countries are trying to keep their acquisition plans quiet so we can’t comment too much, other than to say we are active in a number of countries,” Bean said at the show.
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