Less thana year after the prototype of South Korea's next-generation fighter KF-21 Boramae made its first flight, the KFX program is continuing at full speed to meet the very ambitious schedule which plans to start series production from 2024 and the entry into service of the first aircraft from 2026 to replace the F-4 and F-5 still in service in the within the country's air force.
Indeed, in a statement from South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, the agency overseeing the acquisition of the country's armament programs announced that the device had just passed an initial evaluation of its combat capabilities, so as to pave the way for series production next year.
It must be said that the South Korean engineers and test pilots have not been idle in recent months. The 4 prototypes already built, three single-seaters and one two-seater, have already carried out more than 200 test flights, which have made it possible to evaluate the behavior, speed, reach, operation of the systems and the flight envelope of the device.
But what is most surprising is not so much the intensity of the tests, as the strict respect of the planned schedule, while the Boramae is the first medium fighter, which is moreover twin-engine and halfway between the 4แต and 5แต generation, without that he encounters technical or conceptual difficulties requiring some additional delays.
For comparison, it took the French defense aeronautical industry almost 10 years between the first prototype in 1991 and the arrival of the first Rafale M within the 12F flotilla, and the manufacturer Saab took almost 10 years to design and produce its Gripen E.
Of course, each program has its history and its own constraints, but it is no less true that the South Korean aeronautical industry today achieves with the KF-21 Boramae an impressive demonstration of its new capacities to design, test and produce a new modern combat aircraft in a particularly short time.
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[โฆ] a month ago, the KF-21 had also obtained, as such, a first partial combat qualification, while it is expected that the aircraft will receive its full combat capability in 2026, at the time of [โฆ]