Indonesia has officially returned to the South Korean multi-purpose fighter program. Yesterday, November 12, the portal janes.com He reported that the Indonesian Defense Ministry confirmed its commitment to finance 20% of the development costs of the KF-21/IF-X.
Jakarta claims a twenty percent stake in the $6.7 billion project, under which it will receive a prototype and technology for the production of more than 50 aircraft in Indonesia. Payments are calculated for the next five years. At the same time, Indonesia will pay 30% of its contribution in kind. Earlier, Indonesia intended to buy fighters from Russia, making 50% of the payment in kind, but after signing the agreement in 2018, it did not go further.
The first prototype of the Korean fighter KF-21 Boramae
Image source: koreaaero.com
Indonesia entered the KFX/IFX fighter program in 2012, but later overdue several payments, and in 2020 returned its engineers to their homeland allegedly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, South Korea has built the first prototype of the aircraft, called the KF-21 Boramae, and is preparing it for flight tests. Later it became known that 32 Indonesian engineers returned to South Korea.
The Korean KF-21 is equipped with two engines. With a fuselage length of 16.9 m, a width of 11.2 m and a height of 4.7 m, it is similar in size to the F-18 fighter. The declared characteristics indicate that the maximum speed of the aircraft will be Mach 1.81 (2200 km/h), range - 2900 km, payload - 7.7 tons.
