Seoul: South Korea state-run Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) announced that Seoul has successfully completed all planned flight tests for the KF-21 fighter jet.
According to Bahrain News Agency, since the rollout of the first KF-21 prototype in April 2021, officials have conducted around 1,600 flight tests without any accidents. DAPA officials said they were able to accelerate the flight test phase by about two months by expanding venues for the flight test and including an air-to-air refueling process in the test phase.
They indicated that they plan to complete the development of the fighter jet by the first half of this year and deliver the first batch of the advanced fighter jet to the Air Force in the second half. South Korea launched the KF-21 development program in 2015 to acquire a homegrown supersonic fighter to replace the Air Force’s aging fleet of U.S.-made F-4 and F-5 jets.
The first production model of the homegrown fighter jet entered final assembly in May last year.