At the Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) hangar, in Sacheon, Gyeongsangnam-do, the KF-21 Boramae fighter was developed.
In 2022, the KF-21 Boramae will make its maiden flight.
In the structural test building adjacent to the production plant, the endurance tests on the two KF-21 Boramae structural testers went smoothly.
The KF-21 Boramae has more than 100,000 holes for attaching more than 220,000 bolts and nuts, testing how much it can withstand the pressures it continuously applies during flight.
The wing load fatigue test is very important.
The fighter jet's lifespan is 30 years, but is tested to see if it can last up to 2.5 times its lifespan (75 years).
The KF-21 Boramae is equipped with 7.6 tons of missiles, bombs and fuel tanks on the fuselage and both wings, and performs high-speed maneuvers.
This is to check that there is no damage to the wing by repeatedly applying pressure equivalent to that load 100,000 times.
In the adjoining test equipment, 3232 wires were connected to the KF-21 Boramae to test the fighter's structural functions.
"We analyze and complete a lot of data from more than 3,000 channels every day," said Lee Won-seok, head of the structural test team.
From The Joongang, comparison of the size and shape of the KF-21 Boramae and other fighter aircraft.
The KF-21 Boramae is smaller than the F-15 fighter, but larger than the F-35A and KF-16.
Basically, the KF-21 Boramae is designed as a stealth structure, so the radar detectable area is very small.
The KF-21 is the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world and has the potential to be the strongest fighter in Northeast Asia.
Its appearance is similar to the F-22, the most powerful stealth fighter in the world.
As the South Korean Air Force has adopted Lockheed Martin's F-35A as a stealth fighter, the KF-21 Boramae is expected to replace the soon-to-be obsolete F-4 and F-5 series fighters, and even the F-16.
There will be far less misfortunes like the downing of an aging KF-5E fighter jet on the 13th.
The KF-21 Boramae is equipped with a domestically developed AESA (active electronic scanning phased array) radar, EOTGP (electro-optical target tracking equipment), IRST (infrared tracking device), and an integrated electronic warfare system.
The AESA radar, which can be said to be the eye of this fighter aircraft, is said to have superior performance compared to those made in China or Russia.
The AESA radar was developed by the Defense Science Research Institute (ADD) and manufactured by Hanwha.
Thanks to this AESA radar, the KF-21 Boramae can see and fire missiles in front of North Korean warplanes, as well as Chinese and Russian warplanes.
"There are many secrets about the KF-21 AESA radar that cannot be disclosed," said a KAI official.
The AESA radar will be installed on the Boeing 737 and tested in the West Sea from February this year, and the performance of the AESA radar will also be tested with the KF-21 Boramae starting next year.
The KF-21 Boramae is also equipped with functions such as automatic posture recovery, automatic terrain tracking, automatic terrain collision avoidance and automatic steering.
The automatic posture recovery system is a function that allows the KF-21 to automatically return the posture to normal when the pilot doubts the fighter's posture in a state of vertigo.
In the past, many fighter plane accidents have occurred in the state of Vertigo, where the sky and the sea are indistinguishable, or it is not known whether the plane overturned.
The autopilot and automatic terrain tracking and collision avoidance systems allow the KF-21 Boramae to fly to its destination while avoiding a collision by calculating the mountain height and the fighter's speed by entering coordinates while flying at low altitude in the mountains.
The KF-21 Boramae has three flight control computers, so even if two of them failed, there were no problems in flight.
It is a triple security device.
KAI has been promoting the KF-X business since 2015. This is the largest weapons systems research and development project since the formation of the military.
From The Guru, this project is the largest weapons systems research and development project since the formation of the military.
The fuselage of the KF-21 Boramae is 16.9m long, 11.2m wide and 4.7m high, which is larger than the F-16 fighter and similar to the F-18 fighter.
Equipped with twin engines and applying low-visibility technology.
The KF-21 Boramae has a maximum speed of Mach 1.81 (2200 km/h), a range of 2,900 km, and an ordnance payload of 7.7 tonnes.