South Korea is going on a high tech spending spree, to provide itself with modern military capabilities, and cut its dependence on the United States for support in this area. This means increasing their defense budget an average of eleven percent each year between now and 2008. That adds up to over $92 billion in spending. While much of this goes to maintain the current armed forces, South Korea will also be buying airborne early warning systems aircraft, Patriot anti-missile missiles, Aegis (radar system) equipped destroyers and reconnaissance satellites. Next years defense budget will be $19.5 billion, an increase of 12.6 percent over this years. For decades, South Korea has felt militarily dependant on the United States. For the last two decades, the United States has been trying to convince South Korea that it was able to dispense with that dependency and take care of itself. The South Koreans have finally got the message.