AW&ST 에 소개된 한국형 전투기 (KF-X) 개발 사업

 

AW&ST 의 북경 주재원 Bradley Perett 이 최근 서울을 방문한 후, 금주에 발행된 AW&ST 에 보도한 우리 대한민국의

한국형 전투기 개발 사업 (KF-X), 보라매 사업, 관련 기사를 아래 소개 합니다.

 

아래 기사에서는 향후 우리 대한민국이 KF-X 는 물론, 무인기/무인공격기에 대한 개발 역시 진행하고 있다는 언급을

하고 있습니다.

 

KF-X 와 관련해서는 별도 기사로 상세히 전하고 있습니다만, 아래 기사가 오히려 핵심적 내용을 이해하기 쉽게 언급

하고 있어 소개 합니다.

 

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Toward 2030

Seoul aims to field an unmanned strike aircraft as top-tier weapon

Aviation Week & Space Technology, 06/06/2011

Author : Bradley Perrett

 

If the South Korean air force’s plans come to fruition, by 2030 its leading combat aircraft will be pilotless — and domestically made. That strike aircraft will be backed by a home-grown manned fighter, which by then will have been in service for nine years.

 

It all seems rather ambitious for a country whose main experience with combat aircraft development so far has been a light attack aircraft based on a supersonic trainer that was designed with guidance from Lockheed Martin.

 

Yet one cannot quickly dismiss South Korea’s ambition to move ahead in aerospace. Think, for example, of how far its car industry has advanced since the 1980s.

 

Korean Air Aerospace, the manufacturing division of the airline, is working on a scaled demonstrator drone to the design of the Agency for Defense Development, having beaten rival Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) for the contract.

 

Specifications are unknown, but in 2009 KAI may have been reflecting official thinking when it proposed its own concept for a full-scale unmanned combat aircraft with a gross weight of 4.055 metric tons (8,900 lb.), span of 9.1 meters (30 ft.), length of 8.4 meters and speed of Mach 0.85.

 

The demonstrator is due to fly in 2013, and in that respect the project is ahead of the much older plan to develop the KF-X manned fighter, for which no hardware has flown.

 

The preliminary design phase of the KF-X will begin this month. Again, the agency will do that work, although Indonesia will pay 10% of the cost and send 30 designers to help. If KF-X goes ahead, industry will do engineering manufacturing development. The target for entry into service is 2021, unchanged since a 2009 review of the program.

 

Yet KF-X may not go ahead. The South Korean parliament has shown little enthusiasm for it, and it faces the challenge of persuading a foreign partner to shoulder much of the costs.

 

Following the recommendations of the review, the agency has backed away from developing a fighter technologically comparable to the Lockheed Martin F-35 and is now aiming at a level called F-16 Plus, meaning something better than the latest F-16 versions. Foreign help is needed and is expected to come from the winner of the air force’s F-X competition (see p. 20).

 

“I think the F-X will be the last program to procure aircraft from abroad,” says Col. Taek-Hwan Song, the director of the force requirement division at air force headquarters. “We are going to develop our own fighters and develop our own unmanned aircraft.”

 

The air force divides its fighters into three levels: high, medium and low. The unmanned aircraft would take the top spot, says Song. Since South Korea’s high-grade aircraft carry the main burden of strike missions, and since the technology of unmanned air-to-air combat is considered distant even for advanced aircraft industries, the South Korean drone would certainly be a small bomber.

 

The KF-X is supposed to be a mid-level combat aircraft. A program official says it would probably have a foreign engine but could have a South Korean radar. Stealth is the biggest challenge for South Korea, but program managers have not given up on the idea of the U.S. sharing some of its closely held know-how. “It depends on how stealthy the aircraft is,” says the official.

 

The 2009 review recommended an aircraft with an empty mass of 10.4 metric tons and either one or two engines.

 

Lockheed Martin suggested a much smaller and more achievable aircraft a few years ago: an advanced development of the KAI T-50 supersonic trainer. That proposal must have been attractive to KAI, not only because it would have exploited T-50 tooling but also because South Korean industry worries that an advanced combat aircraft would be beyond its technical resources. The agency was not satisfied with the proposal, however.

 

Lockheed Martin could help South Korea develop a new design, says an executive on that company’s F-X sales push, James Dorrell.

 

Eurofighter offers further development of the Typhoon. “If the Typhoon does not meet KF-X requirements, then we’ll evolve the aircraft as necessary,” says Craig Penrice of Eurofighter partner BAE Systems, stressing that the U.S. has no monopoly on stealth. one obstacle to using the Typhoon is that the agency is about to draw up its own design, and it has previously shown an inclination to insist on the use of its plans.

 

 

 ⓒ Jon Ostrower

 

  ⓒ Jon Ostrower

 

  ⓒ Jon Ostrower

 

  ⓒ Jon Ostrower

 

  ⓒ Katsuhiko Tokunaga

 

  ⓒ Katsuhiko Tokunaga