Two-Seat Trainer Variant of South Korea’s KF-21 Jet Makes First Flight

The fourth prototype of South Korea’s KF-21 Boramae fighter jet, which is also the first two-seat variant of the jet, completed its first flight on February 20.

The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said in a statement today that the aircraft took off from the 3rd Training Wing, Sacheon at 11:19 am. The flight’s duration was 34 minutes.

In January, the KF-21 completed its first supersonic flight. This follows more than 80 test flights of the Boramae in recent years. While the KF-21 is technically a fourth-generation airframe, its radar-evading capabilities bring it into the stealth fighter arena alongside the U.S. F-35, Russian Su-57 and Chinese J-20 jet.

Prototype 4 is a two-seat aircraft with two pilots on board, with the cockpit divided into front and rear seats, unlike the previous prototype, which was a single-seat aircraft. This variant will be mainly used for new pilot training missions.

DAPA will build four single seat aircraft (Units 1, 2, 3, 5); and two double seat aircraft (Units 4, 6).

As a cockpit is added near the front fuselage (the central part excluding the wings and tail of the aircraft), the internal fuel tank space is slightly changed, but the rest of the body has the same shape as the single seater.

Considering that this flight of Provisional Unit 4 was the first flight for the purpose of confirming the initial flight stability, it flew with only one pilot on board despite being a two-seat aircraft. Through this, it plans to carry out various missions such as checking the effect of the difference in shape from the single-seat type on the aircraft, AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Phased Array) radar and avionics test.

The paintwork of Provisional Unit 4 has the shape of four airplanes rising into the sky at the same time on the vertical tail part, just like Provisional Unit 3, and is different from Provisional Unit 3 in that the rising shape of the aircraft is yellow.

In the first half of this year, if the 5th and 6th prototypes also begin flight tests, a total of 6 prototypes will expand the range and perform aircraft performance verification through continuous flight tests.