Indigenous unmanned spy jet to make first flight in November: official

SEOUL, Sept. 9 (Yonhap) -- An unmanned South Korean reconnaissance aircraft will make its first flight in November after five years of development, a military official said Friday.
The official said the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) has been developing the medium-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (MUAV) since 2006, spending 160 billion won ($US148.7 million).
"The aircraft will be equipped with locally developed electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) sensors and also synthetic aperture radar (SAR)," the official said.
The first MUAV aircraft was built in May. The defense ministry had planned to wrap up the development project by the end of this year, but has extended it by another year.
"Global Hawk, the high-altitude UAV that we plan to purchase from the U.S., costs up to 800 billion won each," the official said. "So we could instead deploy our own unmanned aircraft."
The local MUAV project was almost scrapped earlier this year as part of the ministry's defense reform plans to streamline military expenditures, with Seoul poised to acquire Global Hawk, another unmanned spy plane, from Washington. The official said the National Assembly persuaded the military to stick with the local development since a lot of money had already gone into the project and it had been mostly successful.
The MUAV can travel at an altitude of up to 10 kilometers and its radar has a range of about 200km.