Defense Firms Question ADD's Role as It Shifts to Program Management – Seoul Economic Daily

Defense Firms Question ADD’s Role as It Shifts to Program Management  Seoul Economic Daily

"They focus on managing defense programs and contract awards rather than on defense science and technology research, and they throw their weight around. Can you really call that a state-funded research institute?" said an official at one defense contractor. "We are well aware of the concerns the defense industry has raised about the role of the Agency for Defense Development, and we are reviewing ways to improve it so that it fulfills its proper function," said an official at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration. Parts of South Korea's defense industry are questioning whether the Agency for Defense Development, or ADD, the country's only defense research and development institution, still serves a purpose.

As ADD has shifted from its founding mission as a weapons developer to that of a supplier of advanced innovation technologies, it has concentrated on program management rather than on defense science and technology research — and in doing so, critics say, it has come to sit atop the K-defense ecosystem as its dominant player, to the detriment of domestic contractors. According to reporting by The Seoul Economic Daily on the 22nd, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration recently audited ADD, an affiliated organization, over its management of core technology research items. The audit found problems including negligence in detailed design work for core technology R&D prototypes and inadequate