that would have to be a pretty dumb contract from the host nations perspective, and i have to say i've never seen one where the host abrogates veto to the vendor as its what we use to force the vendor to play nice. you never take boxfloggers at their word..
i would doubt that the vendor would ever get their way as countries always have national interest and sovereign privilege clauses. it smells like a selected retelling of an event. but, without seeing the details, i'm making an uneducated guess based on my own ecperience negotiating fms/itars releases
i knew that, i was focussed on the vendor veto rights being claused in and seeming to be a counter to the host exercising national interest privilege - that just does not make sense. i've seen too many systems where the engineers and uniforms testing solutions put a hole in the vendors claims to capability superiority - no project director in their right mind will be inserting contract clauses that diminish their right to seek better capability if the initial identified solution is causing capability, performance or integration grief with the rest of the supporting (and i mean whole of spectrum) systems
i have no doubt that LM tried it on (esp if it was the same exec if around the gripen/f-16 euro comp period). i have seen the same behaviour from the largest non US defence conglomerate in the world. - so much so that i know that various countries have denied them contracts as retribution for their commercial behaviour.
I have to say that I am more than surprised that if such a contract condition existed that it even got through the hosts legal team. alarm bells would be going off everywhere, and having dealt with the koreans on other combat system solutions, they play hard ball long and slow.
