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Korea marked the start of its own supersonic era on Tuesday when the first in a line of T-50 Golden Eagle aircraft rolled out of the Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) factory in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province. With that, Korea becomes the 12th nation to develop its own supersonic aircraft. The plane will be officially handed over to the Air Force in October.
The T-50 will make its domestic debut at the Seoul Air Show 2005 at Seoul Airport in October and its international debut at the 2005 Dubai Air Show with a ground display and test flight.
Development of the T-50 started in 1997, with the first prototype rolling out of the hangar in October 2001. It made its first flight in August 2002 and broke the sound barrier in February 2003. The first aircraft to come off the assembly line marks the successful completion of development.
Now KAI can mass-produce the T-50, the Air Force embarks on an age of using homemade aircraft for training. The Air Force said it would start using the T-50 in advanced flight training from 2007, once the trainers have been trained. "With the KT-1, which we are already using as our basic flight trainer, pilots will now train on Korean-made planes," it said.
It plans to establish a flight-training squadron with the First Fighter Wing in Gwangju that will operate the T-50 and is to get a total of 94 aircraft at a combined cost of about W4.4 trillion, or US$4.4 billion, between this October and 2007.
The T-50 is 13.14 m long, 9.45 m wide and 4.91 m tall. It has a maximum take-off weight of 13,454 kg and a service altitude of 14,783 m. It can also be converted into an A-50, a light attack aircraft.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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