South Korea Looking to Challenge International Sales of F-35 Fighter Jets with Their Domestically Produced KF-21
Fighter aircraft is the latest defense industry that ROK defense contractors are hoping to take market share of:
South Korea, an industrial and tech powerhouse, was once so poor that its citizens donated money so the government could buy five American fighter jets in case of a North Korean invasion. Now, South Korea is a global weapons producer and seller. It is the third-largest arms supplier to NATO countries, with affordable weapons for nations seeking to refill their stockpiles of K2 battle tanks, K9 self-propelled howitzers and other items.
Its ascent underscores the nation’s dramatic economic and diplomatic evolution since that 1975 national fundraising drive for the American F-4 Phantoms. South Korea retired those Cold War-era jets in June after more than five decades in use — making way for a new generation of homegrown fighter aircraft that will make South Korea one of the few nations to develop its own supersonic jet.
South Korea hopes its KF-21 Boramae will be a cheaper alternative to the U.S.-made F-35. The prototype was unveiled in 2021, and mass production is set to begin in 2026. “South Korea is making a big push to engage globally,” said Peter Layton, a military analyst and visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in Brisbane, Australia. “They’re going from a big buyer to not just a maker but a designer of aircraft.”
You can read more at the link.
That’s a beautiful airframe.
Also…familiar looking.
Time for Korea to pay their share of their own defense. No more excuses.
From the interwebs, so possibly inaccurate:
I would love to see a Red Flag with one side using KF-21s.
Are you sure about that? KF-21 didn’t just fly, it already carried out the inflight fuel fill-up and tested firing all its air-to-air missiles. And it’s going under production, to be deployed by next year. And if you’re going to carp about its General Electric jet engines that it uses, Korea already has the technology and experience making huge electric power turbines, so it doesn’t take much to develop its own jet engines by 2030. Korea can make anything the US can, so don’t rest in that chair so easy, cowboy.
Obviously reading comprehension is not a strength with our chinabot…
That means the source was not 100% solid.
Also, wanting to see it compete in a Red Flag is not a slam, so wake up and wipe the drool off your chinny-chin-chin…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Red_Flag
When can we get one with better than 3th grade language skills?
Typically there is a phase in airframe development where the test pilots fly it to see if it is airworthy and can do some basic things. The next step is the phase where they really take it through the testing grind and see exactly what it can do (those are the “regular” pilots, who conduct operations and tactical maneuvers…the top of the class ones, with a lot of experience). After that thorough testing, it becomes “operational”. At least, that’s how it is in the US and I assume it’s the same elsewhere.
When the F22 was in the testing phase, the engineers didn’t think it could get into an uncontrolled spin. They asked the pilots to try.
They sure weren’t happen when one succeeded though.
Red flag is very cool, I’d like to see that too.
@Liz, my BUFF crew only went to one Red Flag. I still have the patch.
As we were barrelling over a low rise, about 150 feet above the terrain, a Navy F-4 went under us from roughly 7:00 (behind and slightly to our left) to 1:00 (he had to pull up so hard he almost hit us)…
He must have scuffed his jet on the sand and “needed a minute to collect his thoughts” after that.
We were close to maximum burn on all 8 engines and the turbulence for him would have been pretty severe.
IIRC, the BUFF pilots were scolded for flying that low. Never heard about anything else though.
Long ago in an Air Force far, far away…