earticle

영어

Industry's Independent Research and Development(IR&D) is research and development initiated and conducted by contractors at their own risks and funding. IR&D system itself in Korea could be beneficial to both government and defense industries. However, it has not been widely used by defense industries for a couple of decades due to mainly Korean-specific government's designating system. The system permits one or two government's designating defense industries by defense business areas to participate in defense acquisition programs. Defense contractors have had little motive to conduct IR&D, because they have enjoyed their monopolistic or duopolistic privilege.
Since the designating system in Korea is scheduled to be abolished from the first day of 2009, IR&D system is considered by many defense companies to have preemptive position in the defense acquisition program. This paper reviews the justification of IR&D system in the future competitive defense market. It suggests government's supporting actions to encourage and facilitate IR&D including expansion of the subject-matter, facilitation of accessing long- and mid-term acquisition information, public notice for fair competition, government's support for test and evaluation, high reward for high risk IR&D, efficient R&D cost management and the detailed specification of IR&D related procedure.