(LEAD) Coherent allied airpower crucial in defending S. Korea: U.S. official

(ATTN: ADDS comment in disaster relief in last 2 paras, background on combined air
command in paras 9-11)
By Sam Kim

SEOUL AIRBASE, South Korea, Oct. 20 (Yonhap) -- The ability of South Korea and
the United States to perform "seamlessly as one" in air combat is crucial to
defense against North Korea, a senior U.S. Air Force official said Tuesday, as
the allies prepare to hold their highest annual defense talks this week.
"Interoperability: that's an important piece of capabilities," Bruce Lemkin,
deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force for international affairs, said in an
interview in Seoul.
"The most basic piece of interoperability is the one we already have," he said.
"It is not just the airplanes, weapons, centers and systems. It's the concepts of
operations that we share."
Lemkin was speaking while leading the U.S. Air Force delegation to the Seoul
International Aerospace and Defense Exhibition at an airbase south of Seoul.
His visit coincided with a scheduled meeting between U.S. Defense Secretary
Robert Gates and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Tae-young, in Seoul on
Thursday.
The two nations, which fought together against North Korea in the 1950-53 Korean
War, are expected to warn the communist state against relapsing into bellicose
behavior, such as its missile tests on Oct. 12, at the meetings, South Korean
officials said this week.
"In the wake of North Korea's recent missile launches, the secretary will
reinforce America's commitment to the alliance and South Korea's defense" during
the Security Consultative Meeting, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said last
week in a briefing.
"It is very important not to just think of capabilities in terms of hardware,"
Lemkin said. "It's the airman-airman relationship. That's operating together,
training together, flying together."
Airpower is a component of the combined military strength of South Korea and the
U.S. that will largely remain at its current level even after their Combined
Forces Command dissolves in 2012.
South Korea reclaims the wartime operational command of its troops from the U.S.
that year, after it was relinquished at the onset of the Korean War, which ended
in a ceasefire.
"It will be the only component organized in a truly combined fashion," Lt. Gen.
Jeffrey Remington, commander of the 7th U.S. Air Force, had said Monday. The U.S.
operates 28,500 troops here.
Lemkin, a former U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff representative to talks on providing
North Korea with energy for its nuclear dismantlement, expressed concern that
such interoperability may be undermined should South Korea stick to its
aspirations of building its own stealth fighters.
"It will be very difficult to ensure that we have that kind of interoperability,"
he said. "But I certainly understand the desire to continue to develop indigenous
aerospace capabilities."
South Korea has been seeking to replace its aging F-4 and F-5 fighters with ones
developed through its KF-X project, which faces a murky future due to financial
and technological difficulties.
"Every country that has gone to develop their own fighter has found that it's
very complicated, very expensive, very difficult," Lemkin said.
He added that the development of South Korea's Air Force should be in line with
the country's broadening efforts to meet the growing "demand for humanitarian and
natural disaster relief."
"In a world where the common denominator is that we share the fact that as human
beings we are vulnerable, these are capabilities that can be of great value," he
said. "So many aspects of airpower are directly translatable into humanitarian
and natural disaster relief."
samkim@yna.co.kr
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