Reporter flies in South Korea's supersonic fighter aircraft FA-50
- 6 years ago
Marking this Armed Forces Day here in South Korea,... our defense ministry correspondent Park Ji-won got to take a ride in a fighter jet... and she took the Air Force up on their offer... soaring through the skies above Korea in the locally-produced FA-50.
Let's take a look.
Anyone hoping to train in the air as a fighter pilot... has to start with physiological training on the ground.
Every Korean fighter pilot goes through this training every three years.
One of the main things is the G-force test,... which trains pilots to endure extreme gravity.
Pilots need to be able to withstand up to 9 Gs,... or nine times gravity's normal strength.
Under G-forces that strong, if you haven't learned the special breathing methods,... you'll pass out instantly... as gravity drains blood out of the brain, causing hypoxia.
There's also training for low air pressure, something pilots experience way up in the sky.
The chamber simulates the conditions found at an altitude of 25-thousand feet, or nearly eight thousand meters.
Without an oxygen mask, your oxygen levels will fall dangerously in less than three minutes.
You can go up in a fighter jet only once you've passed the training.
You'll still need a safety and mission briefing beforehand, though, and you have to put on a G-suit, which helps with the extreme gravity.
I took a ride in South Korea's first supersonic combat fighter,... developed by Korea Aerospace Industries in conjunction with the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin.
"This is the FA-50, and I've been given the chance to fly in it and experience all of those specs myself."
I got in the back seat... and put on the helmet and oxygen mask.
The pilot flew us at an average speed of over eight hundred kilometers per hour,... but its maximum speed is Mach one-point-five, or more than double that.
He did a series of training maneuvers... for surface attacks and air combat.
The pilot took us shooting straight up, dove the plane way down,... and careened into tight-angle turns.... at an altitude as low as five-hundred feet and as high as forty thousand.
Air Force Major Jo Ji-soo,... a veteran fighter pilot with over two-thousand flight hours over the past 15 years,... acknowledges the South Korean jet's excellent capabilities.
"It is a great honor to operate the first fighter aircraft developed using South Korean technology. The more flight hours I put in, the prouder I become as I experience more of the aircraft's excellent performance."
South Korea has exported dozens of the most advanced variant of the T-50 family along with other models,... making Korea only the world's 6th exporter of supersonic aircraft.
"Some 360 aircraft from the FA-50 family are in operation both in and outside of the country. The models' consistently safe record has built confidence in South Korean fighter aircraft."
With these home-grown state-of-the-art fighter jets,... South Korean pilots get training on an almost daily basis,... for an average o
Let's take a look.
Anyone hoping to train in the air as a fighter pilot... has to start with physiological training on the ground.
Every Korean fighter pilot goes through this training every three years.
One of the main things is the G-force test,... which trains pilots to endure extreme gravity.
Pilots need to be able to withstand up to 9 Gs,... or nine times gravity's normal strength.
Under G-forces that strong, if you haven't learned the special breathing methods,... you'll pass out instantly... as gravity drains blood out of the brain, causing hypoxia.
There's also training for low air pressure, something pilots experience way up in the sky.
The chamber simulates the conditions found at an altitude of 25-thousand feet, or nearly eight thousand meters.
Without an oxygen mask, your oxygen levels will fall dangerously in less than three minutes.
You can go up in a fighter jet only once you've passed the training.
You'll still need a safety and mission briefing beforehand, though, and you have to put on a G-suit, which helps with the extreme gravity.
I took a ride in South Korea's first supersonic combat fighter,... developed by Korea Aerospace Industries in conjunction with the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin.
"This is the FA-50, and I've been given the chance to fly in it and experience all of those specs myself."
I got in the back seat... and put on the helmet and oxygen mask.
The pilot flew us at an average speed of over eight hundred kilometers per hour,... but its maximum speed is Mach one-point-five, or more than double that.
He did a series of training maneuvers... for surface attacks and air combat.
The pilot took us shooting straight up, dove the plane way down,... and careened into tight-angle turns.... at an altitude as low as five-hundred feet and as high as forty thousand.
Air Force Major Jo Ji-soo,... a veteran fighter pilot with over two-thousand flight hours over the past 15 years,... acknowledges the South Korean jet's excellent capabilities.
"It is a great honor to operate the first fighter aircraft developed using South Korean technology. The more flight hours I put in, the prouder I become as I experience more of the aircraft's excellent performance."
South Korea has exported dozens of the most advanced variant of the T-50 family along with other models,... making Korea only the world's 6th exporter of supersonic aircraft.
"Some 360 aircraft from the FA-50 family are in operation both in and outside of the country. The models' consistently safe record has built confidence in South Korean fighter aircraft."
With these home-grown state-of-the-art fighter jets,... South Korean pilots get training on an almost daily basis,... for an average o