Four
Philippine Air Force (PAF) pilots will be deployed to South Korea
This
was confirmed by Air Defense Wing official Col. Miguel Ernesto Okol in an
interview Monday.
He
added that these officers are relatively junior and only have the rank of
captain and major.
Aside
from this, these PAF officials relatively have high jet time compared to other
pilots.
Okol
said that these officials have accrued their jet time flying SIAI-Marchetti
S-211 jet trainers which double as attack aircraft of the PAF.
"These
men will be rated as test pilots and operational pilots of the F/A-50s while
those who only have 200 to 300 hours of jet hours will be first made to undergo
F/A-50 simulator training before being trained and certified by our test pilots
for F/A-50 operations," the PAF official said in Filipino.
Deployment
of these PAF pilots to South
Korea
The
Philippines and Korea Aerospace Industries, Ltd (KAI) signed the P18.9 billion
deal for 12 units of the F/A-50 last March 28.
Department
of National Defense undersecretary for finance, modernization, installations,
and munitions Fernando Manalo said that the first two F/A-50 jet aircraft will
be delivered 18 months after the opening of the letter of credit, the next two
will be delivered 12 months later and the remaining eight jet planes to be
delivered in staggered basis within eight months.
The
F/A-50 has a top speed of Mach 1.5 or one and a half times the speed of sound
and is capable of being fitted air-to-air missiles, including the AIM-9
"Sidewinder" air-to-air and heat-seeking missiles aside from light
automatic cannons.
The
F/A-50 will act as the country's interim fighter until the Philippines
The
F/A-50 design is largely derived from the F-16 "Fighting Falcon", and
they have many similarities: use of a single engine, speed, size, cost, and the
range of weapons.
KAI's
previous engineering experience in license-producing the KF-16 was a starting
point for the development of the F/A-50.
The
aircraft can carry two pilots in tandem seating. The high-mounted canopy
developed by Hankuk Fiber is applied with stretched acrylic, providing the
pilots with good visibility, and has been tested to offer the canopy with
ballistic protection against four-pound objects impacting at 400 knots.
The
altitude limit is 14,600 meters (48,000 feet), and airframe is designed to last
8,000 hours of service.
There
are seven internal fuel tanks with capacity of 2,655 liters (701 US
An
additional 1,710 liters (452 US
Trainer
variants have a paint scheme of white and red, and aerobatic variants white,
black, and yellow.
The
F/A-50 "Fighting Eagle" uses a single General Electric F404-102
turbofan engine license-produced by Samsung Techwin, upgraded with a full
authority digital engine control system jointly developed by General Electric
and KAI.
The
engine consists of three-staged fans, seven axial stage arrangement, and an
afterburner.
The
aircraft has a maximum speed of Mach 1.4-1.5.
Its
engine produces a maximum of 78.7 kN (17,700 lbf) of thrust with afterburner.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=645025
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