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Air Warfare, Global
A model of a Korean Airspace Industries FA-50 was on display at the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition in Malaysia in May 2023. (Reuben Johnon / Breaking Defense)
PADANG MATSIRAT LANGKAWI, Malaysia — Korean Aerospace Industries (KAI) had the distinction of signing the largest contract for an export sale to the armed forces of Malaysia during the May 23-27 Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition (LIMA). The Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) will acquire 18 of the FA-50 Block 20 “Fighting Eagle” trainer/light combat aircraft, a jet jointly developed by KAI with Lockheed Martin in the US. These aircraft will replace the BAE Systems Hawk 208 light fighters already in service.
It’s not nearly on the level of the $2.3 billion, market shaking September 2022 contract with Poland, which will see KAI to deliver 48 FA-50 aircraft to Warsaw in its first major European win. But a win is a win in the jet market, and KAI nabbing the largest deal at LIMA certainly raised eyebrows.
KAI leadership has not been shy about its goals of expanding the FA-50 line globally.
At the July 2022 Farnborough Air Show, KAI’s previous CEO, Ahn Hyun-ho, stated the company was redoubling its efforts to market the FA-50 around the world and had upgraded the aircraft by incorporating NATO requirements into the versions offered to European nations.
He also added that there was a planned goal of eventually selling 1,000 of the T-50 and its variants globally. At present, there are 100 jets already in service in the Pacific — smaller buys from Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines mixed into the larger South Korean procurement. (Iraq has also purchased the aircraft.)
If the company is to reach those goals, winning smaller, but vital, competitions like Malaysia may be the best way forward after the FA-50 lost out on the US Air Force’s lucrative training competition several years ago.
And the Malaysian sale comes with two significant, strategic aspects for the company. The first is that as part of the sale, Malaysia will become a preferred Maintenance, Refurbishment and Overhaul (MRO) hub for other regional operators of the FA-50 — potentially enticing other members of the ASEAN community to buy the jet, which is significantly cheaper than higher-end US or Russian kit.
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Speaking to the local Malaysian news service Bernama via a translator, KAI’s current CEO Kang Goo-Young explained “there are some areas of technical support that we will be providing and one of them is maintenance capabilities…then the Royal Malaysia Air Force (RMAF) will have capabilities to operate a MRO hub in country and to also serve other Asian countries that operating KAI products.”
The second strategic aspect of the sale are plans for the involvement of local industry — a move that echoes what KAI did in Poland, and potentially gives Malaysia an incentive to buy more jets down the line.
“As part of the Industrial Collaboration Program (ICP), the final assembly of the combat aircraft bought by Malaysia will be performed in Malaysia,” said Kang. “So out of the 18 (FA-50 Block 20 procured by Malaysia) four will be made in South Korea while the remaining 14 aircraft will be assembled here with technical coordination between Malaysia and Korea.”
KAI’s International Business Development Director for Asia, Sangshin Park, told Breaking Defense during the show that there is absolutely a strategy in place for developing a regional market, both for the FA-50 and KAI’s next-generation KF-21 Boramae (Korean for “falcon” or “fighting hawk”) fighter aircraft.
“We are very proud of the [FA-50] contract with the RMAF and of course we have firm expectations for a follow-on order. This would be for a second tranche of 18 FA-50 models,” said Park. That follow-on is based on the RMAF’s Capability 2055 (CAP 55) plan that calls for the acquisition of 36 lightweight fighters.
As with the aircraft that will be delivered to Poland, the FA-50s for the RMAF will be fitted with the Raytheon PhantomStrike radar. This will make it the very first Active Electronic Scanning Array (AESA) fighter in Malaysian service with this design based on current-generation Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology. Park stated that the integration of the new radar into the aircraft will begin in 2025 and will be completed before the first deliveries of the aircraft for the RMAF in October 2026.
Beyond this FA-50 acquisition and the anticipated second batch of 18 aircraft, KAI are once again discussing the development of a single-engine version of the aircraft that would be designated F-50. This aircraft should begin development next year and would have completed that process by 2028.
Previously the plans for a single-seat fighter based on the FA-50 had been shelved in favor of placing all available resources into development of the KF-21. The revival of the F-50 single-seat aircraft is part of a corporate strategic plan called “Global KAI 2050 — Beyond Aerospace” that has a goal of making the company the seventh-largest aerospace firm in the world.
Underpinning the plan is an overall goal of reducing KAI’s dependence on Korean government procurement and to increase sales in the export market. Previous company statements have outlined a two-staged process in which the FA-50’s tailored to nations’ individual requirements.
In stage one marketing campaigns would be directed where there are still older MiG and Su models, F-5, A-37, A-4, Alpha Jet, L-39 and other legacy attack and training platforms still in inventory. Once a sale is made in one of those nations that same air force then becomes a candidate for the stage two initiative for the sale of a KF-21 — with the objective of giving that country a two-tiered fighter force.
KAI state that at present there are no plans to change out the engine in the FA-50 from the current GE F404 model and replace it with the same uprated F414 that powers the next-generation KF-21 fighter aircraft. Nevertheless, the single-seat F-50 variant would be an upgrade in combat capabilities beyond the FA-50 two-seater and, the company claims, would have 80 percent of the capabilities of an F-16, but at a lower cost.
A model of KAI KF-21 fighter design on display at the 2023 LIMA conference in Malaysia. (Reuben Johnson/Breaking Defense)
Boramae: The Next Generation
Park’s explanation of what could be a future vision for the RMAF is a close match to this same sales model. After Malaysia have procured the full 36 FA-50s that the force’s CAP 55 plan calls for, the RMAF could select between an upgraded, improved single-seat F-50 or the KF-21 as a potential replacement for its Su-30MKM and F/A-18Ds.
Park acknowledged that getting into the RMAF now could help with position the company to replace the Russian jets down the line. Acquisition of the FA-50s, he said, is “primarily as a replacement for the BAE Hawks, but there is a secondary [RMAF] requirement that we are also addressing, and this is a solution for the horrible conditions of the sustainment that the force are receiving from Russia.”
That reference is to the fact the RMAF still require maintenance services and spare parts for their 18 Sukhoi Su-30MKM aircraft acquired from 2009-2014. But since the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow in February 2022 timely deliveries of needed components and other items from the aircraft’s OEM have become problematic.
Capitalizing, however, will require the company to complete its development cycle for the KF-21 at a rapid pace.
According to company sources, KAI plans a very aggressive schedule for the KF-21, which calls for the mass production of the jet to begin in 2026 and to have EMD completed in the same year. South Korean’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has set February 2026 as the date by which series production of Block 1 aircraft should be inaugurated.
Operational and deliverable aircraft would be ready by as early as the next year with 40 units manufactured by 2028. This will be accomplished by maintaining a production process and continuing the final phases of the aircraft’s development in parallel —risky if any developmental issues are discovered late in the process, but the only realistic way to meet that goal. By 2032 the ROKAF should receive 120 KF-21s – and these would be separate from any numbers of aircraft built for export.
One of the first foreign sales targets for KF-21 is Poland. Officials in Warsaw from the Polish Armaments Group (PGZ) have indicated they would be interested in procuring the aircraft and have designated 2026 as their own timeline by when they would have to decide to commit to the program.
PGZ sources told the Polish news outlet Defence24 “it is possible that in the future that… an industrial cooperation in the area of development and production of the KF-21 Boramae, where the natural partner for KAI Ltd. would be, among others, Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze (Military Aviation Plant) Nr 2 in Bydgoszcz. This is the lead [enterprise] of aviation trade in Poland, that already has experience in maintenance and restoration of F-16s and the C-130 Hercules.”
KAI conducted the successful flight of their fifth single-seat KF-21 prototype earlier in May. This aircraft will be primary test platform for avionics performance verification, to include the AESA radar. The same prototype will then conduct air-to-air refueling tests in the second half of this year.
Weapons testing began earlier this year with test firings of the MBDA Meteor and the Diehl IRIS-T. At the LIMA expo, representatives from MBDA stated that KAI were evaluating these two missiles plus ASRAAM in the first weapon tests for KF-21. Like the plan for production and development of the aircraft to be conducted in parallel, the weapon testing is described by the European weapons consortium as “very aggressive” with Meteor launches having been made part of the first test flight of one of the program prototypes.
The ROKAF will procure at least 160 of the aircraft, which are projected to cost between US $80-100 million per copy. KAI are predicting that air forces retiring their older F-16s and other fourth-generation models will find the KF-21 an affordable replacement that provides 5th-generation data connectivity and performance at a price below that of US or European options.
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