After the tank, the stealth fighter: South Korea is on its way to being a military industrial power. the one that Italy gave up with Maastricht
After the K2 Black Panther battle tank, which will be built on license in Poland, South Korea shows its new 4.5 / 5 generation Stealth fighter, the KF21 Boramae, on the taxiway, ready for take-off. (Falco), shown by the Seoul Ministry of Defense performing taxi tests at Sacheon Airport, located in South Gyeongsang Province.
The airport is adjacent to Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), developer and manufacturer of the fighter jet which is an economical and less complex alternative to the Lockheed Martin F-35 and F-22 Raptor.
Six prototypes of the KF-21 are under construction to support flight tests until 2026, when series production is expected to begin. A local Korean newspaper predicts the first flight on 22 July.
Although the new fighter aircraft appears to be stealth, it is considered a 4.5 generation fighter, not quite a 5th generation fighter. It is intended to replace the now obsolete Republic of Korea (ROKAF) F-4E Phantom II and F-5 Tiger fleet.
The KF-21 will be ROKAF's domestically produced fighter while its fleet of 40 US-made F-35As – the first jet delivered by Lockheed Martin in 2018 – will enter service this spring. South Korea is modernizing its military forces as a show of strength against North Korea. This week he conducted joint military exercises with the United States. ROKAF is expected to deploy 40 KF-21s by 2028 and 120 by 2032, while 50 will be sent to Indonesia.
Let's make a historical reasoning. Italian industry had nothing to envy to the Korean one up to Maastricht, and even a few years later, when it was then decided to bend all industrial development to the needs of "European projects" made in collaboration with other groups, which then often have led are to the production of sacrosanct bins. After Eurofighter, the development of this industrial sector has also stalled. For example, in the drone sector prototypes are produced, but tomorrow, in case of war, we should buy Turkish ones! Korea has a population similar to the Italian one, but, without any "Union" or "Single currency", it has developed a cutting-edge industry. The one we sacrificed ourselves.
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The article After the tank, the stealth fighter: South Korea is on its way to being a military industrial power. what Italy gave up with Maastricht comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/dopo-il-carro-armato-il-caccia-stealth-la-corea-del-sud-si-avvia-ad-essere-una-potenza-industriale-militare-quello-a-cui-rinuncio-litalia-con-maastricht/ on Fri, 08 Jul 2022 10:15:29 +0000.