In the early months of 2025, the Romanian Ministry of Defense plans to finalize a contract for the purchase of new short-range air defense missile systems, with an anticipated cost of 9.48 billion Romanian lei, equivalent to approximately 1.9 billion euros.
The winner will be selected based on the results of a competitive selection process, which has already seen an unexpected twist – the South Korean defense company LIG Nex1 has been removed from the competition due to a bureaucratic formality. This information was reported by Defense Romania.
According to the publication's authors, the formal reason for the disqualification of LIG Nex1 was that the company failed to provide a receipt for the payment of a guarantee fee amounting to 1% of the expected contract value, which was supposed to be approximately 4.2 million dollars.
Representatives of LIG Nex1 submitted a corresponding appeal on December 16, 2024, but they have yet to receive a response. Moreover, the South Korean agency Yonhap is already reporting that LIG Nex1 has been disqualified from the Romanian tender for short-range air defense systems.
The situation regarding the disqualification appears quite strange, as LIG Nex1 is currently supplying Romania with the KP-SAM Chiron MANPADS under a previously signed contract worth 100 million dollars.
At the same time, it seems that Romania has not lost much in terms of its ability to acquire short-range air defense systems necessary to replace the MIM-23 Hawk systems due to LIG Nex1's disqualification.
Currently, among the participants remaining in the selection process are MBDA with the VL Mica - Mistral 3 system, the Israeli defense company Rafael with the SPYDER and I Derby systems, and the German company Diehl Defence with the IRIS-T SLS and IRIS-T SLM systems. Additionally, unofficial sources suggest that Konsberg with the NASAMS system may also participate in this selection process. The winner will be chosen based on the following criteria ratio: 50% - technical specifications, 30% - cost, 20% - delivery time.
At the beginning of this year, the Romanian armed forces had one air defense regiment equipped with four MIM-23 Hawk PIP III systems.