The joint Lockheed-Martin and Korea Aerospace Industries team building the T-50/A-50 Golden Eagle trainer is celebrating a number of vital milestones this week, while also giving the programme its European debut. Lockheed-Martin delivered the first wingset on 15 June, while this week has also seen the delivery of the landing gear and engine for the first prototype. This entered final assembly on 15 January, and is expected to be rolled out on 28 September, flying for the first time in June next year. The two companies are coy about the number of aircraft on order for the Republic of Korea, saying only that "about 100" are in the first, fully-funded batch, split roughly 50:50 between the baseline A-50 lead-in fighter trainer and the simpler, more austere T-50 unarmed advanced trainer. These will replace Korea's BAE Systems Hawk and T-38 advanced trainers, and some of the force's Lockheed Martin F-5s, currently used as lead-in trainers. Some 200 more aircraft will be required to fully replace the F-5.The Golden Eagle is an all-new design, but draws heavily on Lockheed Martin F-16 design features, with a similar blended wing/fuselage, and with a similar glass cockpit, dominated by two 5-in MFDs, and with F-16 style throttle and sidestick controller. The aircraft has a reconfigurable FBW flight control system, allowing the handling characteristics and limits of other aircraft types to be accurately simulated. The A-50 has an APG-67 radar, underwing hardpoints and a new weapons management system, but the two types are otherwise identical. Discussions about a proposed single-seat light fighter version (the A-50C) are under way. The team has stressed its belief that supersonic performance is essential in any future advanced trainer, insisting that although supersonic flight may be infrequent, there is no substitute for learning to fly in a supersonic aircraft, and claim that there will be cost benefeits, because OCU training (on expensive frontline fighters) will be abbreviated.
Source: Flight Daily News
