Korea Introduced KF-X Stealth Fighter to Vietnam

17 Oktober 2019

Delegation from Vietnam during ADEX 2019 (photo : BaoDatViet)

At the ADEX Defense Exhibition 2019 taking place in Seoul from October 15 to October 21, South Korea exhibited many modern weapons in search of potential customers.

Among the Korean-made domestic weapons, notably the 1: 1 scale model of the 5 KF-X stealth fighter, Seoul recently announced the completion of the design process to prepare. built prototype prototypes.

Although still in the "infancy" stage, the KF-X fighter is considered to be a weapon with high export potential of this Northeast Asian country, attracting the attention of many potential customers. .

At ADEX 2019, the high-ranking military delegation of Vietnam took a close look at the special fighter and was introduced to its tactical features by your side. However, there is still a long way to go to place an order when KF-X's rival Su-57 proved too strong.

The KF-X stealth fighter research program, apart from the main Korean cost, also contributed by Indonesia with 1.5 billion USD in the total estimate of nearly 7.67 billion USD, so the KF-X also known as IF-X.

Preliminary drawings of the stealth fighter KF-X have actually been leaked since 2013, but it was not until mid-2018 that the Korean Defense Procurement Agency officially confirmed.

At that time, they said the basic technical and design requirements as well as the AESA active scan array radar expected to be fitted to the fighter were completed.

Jung Kwang-sun, the leader of DAPA's KF-X program, once said: "We plan to complete the detailed design work in September 2019 and start prototype production," so they finished on time when announcing the process ended 1 month ago.

KF-X view from rear (photo : bmpd)

The published design (codenamed C-109) has completed the tests in the wind tunnel. The first KF-X is expected to ship in 2021 and test flight will take place in 2022.

A very interesting detail is that in the graphic images, the KF-X carries 4 air-to-air missiles outside MBDA Group's Meteor vision and 2 IRIS-T short-range air-to-air missiles at the tip. wing.

Initially, the KF-X intended to integrate the AIM-120 AMRAAM and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles made by Raytheon, but the features of the highly-rated European missile made Seoul rethink.

Another detail to consider is that although it is called a fifth generation fighter, the KF-X fighter does not have a weaponry in the body and still uses an external mount.

Concerned about the fact that the radar reflex area (RCS) of the KF-X fighter did not meet the standard, the designers made it clear that the fighter had three variants corresponding to each stage of transmission. development.

The first version of KF-X Block 1 is the newly adopted configuration that will have RCS equivalent to current 4th and 4+ fighters that are F/A-18E/F, Rafale or Eurofighter Typhoon.

Next, in the KF-X Block 2 generation, the aircraft will have a body bay and the RCS reduced to the equivalent of the first stealth fighter like the F-117.

Finally, the most complete version of KF-X Block 3, the aircraft will have radar cross-section area comparable to F-22, F-35 and B-2 - the most advanced stealth aircraft currently.

As such, the immediate task of Korean aviation engineers is very chaotic, while waiting for the completion of KF-X, they will still have to buy F-35 to temporarily fill the void to not be left behind. Regional rival.

(BaoDatViet)