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Poland and South Korea are reportedly near finalising a significant arms deal which is able to embrace the sale of 48 Korean F-50 light-weight fighter jets in addition to 850 tanks and self propelled artillery items, with the sale marking the newest of a number of successes for the plane which first flew in 2002 and has seen orders from over half a dozen international locations in each fight and coach variants. The F-50 is a by-product of the T-50 coach, which when it comes to fight capabilities is taken into account the most capable on the earth exterior Taiwan and the Chinese language mainland, and inherits the coach’s low operational prices and ease of upkeep whereas enhancing its lethality significantly. With Taiwan’s competing Brave Eagle jet having but to materialise, the T-50 is broadly thought-about probably the most superior coach produced to be suitable with U.S. and NATO {hardware}, main the U.S. Air Power amongst others to point out strong interest in acquisitions. F-50 orders come as Poland seeks to maximise its fight potential within the face of rising tensions with neighbouring Russia, and as retirement of present squadrons of Su-22 and MiG-29 fighters acquired from the Soviet Union is anticipated within the close to future. The T/F-50 has seen important use of fight within the Philippines and Iraq, particularly for counterinsurgency operations towards Islamist militants, though its skill to meaningfully contribute to operations towards a contemporary state militaries equivalent to these of Russia and Belarus stays in query.
A serious shortcoming of the F-50 as a contemporary fighter is its lack of viable past visible vary air to air capabilities, which whereas enough on the Korean Peninsula the place a lot of North Korea’s Air Power equally lacks such capabilities, will probably be a significant shortcoming in Japanese Europe with Russia’s newest air to air missiles being among the most capable on the earth. Though plans to combine the AIM-120C air to air missile onto the fighter have been beforehand thought-about, with the missile having superior capabilities to these equipping most Russian and Belarusian fighter squadrons, this by no means materialised leaving the fighters relying solely on AIM-9 infrared guided missiles and A-50 rotary cannon. The likelihood that F-50s could possibly be modified to make use of such missiles in future, nonetheless, can’t be dominated out, with the potential for equipping them with anti ship cruise missiles additionally having additionally been raised for future variants.
Experiences of a big F-50 sale to Poland comes simply days after South Korea carried out the maiden flight of its stealth fighter, the KF-21, which made it solely the fourth nation on the earth to fly such an plane and the primary to hitch the unique listing since 2011 when China first flew its J-20 prototype. The F-50 sale is anticipated not solely to inject appreciable new funds into this system, which may pave the way in which for improvement of quite a lot of proposed variants equivalent to digital assault jets, however may additionally doubtlessly open the door to Polish acquisitions of the KF-21 as the next finish counterpart.
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