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For the first time, a supersonic fighter made with our technology has surpassed the speed of sound, or Mach 1.

The Defense Acquisition Program Administration plans to further speed up flight tests in the future.



Reporter Hong Young-jae covered the story.



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Today (17th) at 2:58 pm, the KF-21, a Korean supersonic fighter, took off from the 3rd Training Wing of the Sacheon Air Force in South Gyeongsang Province.



It reached over the Korea Strait and reached Mach 1.0 at 3:15 p.m., or 1,224 km/h.



[Mark 1] The



KF-21 ran down and exceeded Mach 1.0, then Mach 1.01, 1.02, and eventually Mach 1.05 and 1,285 km/h.



In July of last year, after successfully flying at 400 km/h for the first time, it flew more than 80 times for half a year, increasing its speed and breaking the sound speed for the first time.



It also means that we succeeded in the first supersonic flight with our own technology after 23 years of developing domestic aircraft.



The Defense Acquisition Program Administration, which supervised the test flight, explained that today's flight is a procedure to check whether the aircraft can withstand the so-called 'sonic boom' caused by air resistance when the speed of sound is exceeded.



[Noh Ji-man / Head of the Korean fighter jet business: Supersonic flight confirmed that the KF-21 has structural stability, which is significant in that it is the first fighter developed with domestic technology to successfully break through the sound speed.]



The Defense Acquisition Program Administration plans to increase the speed of flight tests by increasing the number of prototypes to six by the first half of this year.



The KF-21 is a 4.5-generation fighter, with a target speed of Mach 1.8 and carrying 7.7 tons of missiles and bombs.



The Defense Acquisition Program Administration plans to deploy the KF-21 in actual combat if it passes a total of 2,200 flight tests by 2026.



When the development of the KF-21 is completed, Korea will become the eighth country in the world to develop supersonic fighter jets.



(Video editing: Won-hee Won)