Flight Daily News

The Republic of Korea air force has now graduated a third class of officers from the T-50 training programme. A total of 41 RoKAF pilots have now been trained on the joint Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) and Lockheed Martin supersonic trainer.

KAI says airframe design, digital flight controls, embedded training features, a mission planning and debriefing system, and a comprehensive ground-based training system make the T-50 an excellent capability lead-in fighter trainer (LIFT). Plans are to deliver a total of 72 T-50s to the RoKAF for AJT and LIFT.

To date 25 aircraft have been delivered to the RoKAF, all on schedule. An additional 10 T-50s are also now on order for the RoKAF aerial demonstration team the Black Eagles.

The FA-50 light combat variant of the T-50 is in development and could attract orders of at least 60 aircraft for Korea to replace older aircraft in its inventory.