Marking this Armed Forces Day here in South
Korea,... our defense ministry correspondent
Park Ji-won was presented with the opportunity
to take a ride in a fighter jet... and she
took the Air Force up on their offer.
She soared 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 of about 15
to 25 flight hours a month.
Park Ji-won, Arirang News.
