Deliveries of the two South Korean-made F/A-50
"Fighting Eagle" jet aircraft will proceed as scheduled in December,
this year.
This was confirmed by Defense Undersecretary for Finance,
Modernization and Materiel Fernando Manalo in an interview with the PNA on
Tuesday.
"It is on schedule for December," he said.
The DND official added that it is very probable that the
F/A-50s will be put on aerial display on the 80th anniversary of the Armed
Forces of the Philippines (AFP) this coming December.
Manalo also disclosed that a team from Korea Aerospace
Industries (KAI) will be flying to the Philippines
The Philippines
The Philippines '
F/A-50 took its maiden flight in South Korea
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 with 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 both 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 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 Korean
Aerospace Industries.
The engine consists of three-staged fans, seven axial stage
arrangement, and an afterburner.
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=782921
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