The Direction of Capability-based Military Build-up

국가능력에 기초한한 군사력 건설방향

Defense minister of the ROK, Kim Bong-sin suggested that the ROK′s military build-up policy will change from "scenario-based" to "capability-based". Entering the 1990s the ROK′s military build-up policy met difficulties to accomplish its goal, modernizing and strengthening of its force structure and weapon systems because of limited budget. The concept of capability-based military build-up could commit a fault in estimating total amount of defense resources required for force planing. This is because that the total amount of defense resources related to force plan for the 15 years is fixed to embody military strategy. The concept of capability-based military build-up plays a role as a constraint in choosing a military strategy. This has no connection with military build-up. Therefore the resources of mid-term military build-up program and scale of annual defense budget could be affected by the situations of its national economy. In this respect, the scale of annual defense budget and resources could be changed in accordance with national economic condition, however, the total amount of resources required to build-up military force for 15 years, namely resources of military force planing requirement for 15 years, is given already for the accomplishment of military strategy. The purpose of this study is to seek a direction of the ROK′s military build-up policy in a viewpoint of capability-based military build-up.