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A KF-16, the main fighter jet of the Korean Air Force, crashed into the West Sea at around 9 p.m. last Friday. This is the fifth crash involving a KF-16 fighter jet August 1997. It¡¯s been only five months since another KF-16 crash in the West Sea last February exposed widespread incompetence in maintenance operations as well as a breakdown of discipline within the ranks of the Korean Air Force.
The Air Force had received a product defect warning from the U.S. maker of the engine parts yet recorded in its maintenance logs that there were no problems with the engine, which was later found to have caused the crash last February. It turned out that the Air Force had conducted no proper investigations and had filled in the maintenance logs with false information.
It was also revealed that the Air Force had been unable to conduct proper maintenance on its main fleet of fighter jets, because it had no money left to buy components after having spent all of its W247.6 billion (US$1=W915) maintenance budget for 2000 to 2005 on other areas. As a result, it resorted to taking parts out of one aircraft and putting it in another that was up for maintenance, repeating this process over 2,000 times in one year. That revelation led to the resignation of the Air Force chief of staff.
The latest crash occurred after the Korean Air Force belatedly launched engine inspections on all of its KF-16 fighter jets. The exact cause of the crash has yet to be determined, but the accident has raised serious suspicions over the maintenance standards of the Air Force even after the purported changes that followed the resignation of its top officer.
One of the two pilots who died in the latest crash is Lt. Park In-chul, whose father was killed in an F4 Phantom fighter jet crash in 1984. Lt. Park was raised under difficult circumstances, and at times blamed his father for his hardships, but he apparently became a pilot to continue the dreams of his late father. It is a pity that his life came to an end without fully realizing that dream.
One KF-16 fighter jet costs W42.5 billion, while it takes more than W9 billion to train a single fighter pilot. We must make sure that neither this money nor the patriotism and hopes of our pilots are buried in the ocean. After the maintenance budget diversion was exposed, the government has allocated for next year¡¯s budget W627 billion out of the W659.6 billion the Air Force requested. The government has promised to provide the rest later on. The Air Force must thoroughly investigate not only the causes of the repeated crashes but its track record of maintenance operations as well as how it has addressed the problems plaguing troop discipline.
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