The government is moving to amend the Defense Acquisition Program Act to expand exemptions from feasibility studies when the military introduces new weapons, according to reports on the 20th.
Under current law, weapons with a total new project cost of 50 billion won or more must undergo a feasibility study. It is said that 77% of the weapons newly introduced by the military in 2023 were those surveyed.
To be exempt from this study, the project must require extreme security or involve urgent circumstances such as war, incidents, or terrorism. Because this requirement is so strict, there were said to be almost no projects eligible for exceptions. As a result, critics noted that the introduction of new weapons is delayed by at least a year.
According to a compilation of ChosunBiz reporting that day, the Ministry of Planning and Budget, along with the Ministry of National Defense and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, is reportedly pushing to amend the Defense Acquisition Program Act in the second half of the year to allow exemptions from feasibility studies for new weapons "urgently needed due to significant changes in the battlefield environment or required by national policy."
The procedure for introducing new weapons to the military consists of six main stages: ▲ raising and deciding the military's requirements ▲ preliminary research ▲ establishing the basic project promotion strategy ▲ feasibility study ▲ budgeting ▲ system development and mass production/purchase. According to the Ministry of Planning and Budget's guidelines on total project costs for defense projects, the feasibility study is in principle conducted for eight months but can be extended. As a result, it often takes one to two years, and sometimes even longer.
Earlier, in 2024, the government amended the Defense Acquisition Program Act to create new conditions for exempting feasibility studies. Article 14 of the act states that projects recognized as having no practical benefit from a feasibility study—such as ▲ projects related to national security that require extreme confidentiality ▲ projects involving urgent circumstances such as war, incidents, overseas deployment, enemy infiltration or provocation, or terrorism ▲ projects for which the implementation method or budget calculation is clear—may be exempted from the study.
However, it is said that only one case has been recognized as meeting these conditions and received an exemption from a feasibility study. An official in the defense industry said, "From the perspective of corporations, if a project stops for one to two years at the feasibility stage, it creates problems for continuity," adding, "If regulations are eased, the military can quickly introduce weapons that incorporate the latest technology and prevent the phenomenon where, by the time of deployment, the technology has become outdated."
The government is also considering raising the threshold for those surveyed from the current total new project cost of 50 billion won.
Meanwhile, easing regulations on introducing new weapons is related to one of the Lee Jae-myung administration's national tasks, "realizing the world's top four defense acquisition powers." At the opening ceremony of Seoul ADEX 2025, the country's largest defense industry exhibition, in Oct. last year, the president said, "We will decisively improve policies and systems so that innovative technologies can be swiftly introduced to the industrial field," and added, "We will expand opportunities for the private sector to propose technologies and equipment to the military and broaden the defense industry fast-track system so they can be rapidly applied to the military."