South Korea’s government-run the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) announced on 25 June that it has successfully conducted a safe separation test of a prototype Cheonryong (Sky Dragon) long-range air-to-surface guided missile from a Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) FA-50 light attack aircraft.
The milestone event, which was conducted by the Republic of Korea Air Force’s (RoKAF) 3rd Flying Training Wing, occurred on 23 June and was designed to assess the ability of the missile to detach from its pylon without affecting the FA-50’s safety and functions.
DAPA noted that the test missile covered a distance of 9 km using its inertial and satellite navigation devices and landed in the water within the test site. The latest achievement builds on over 30 tests that assessed various in-flight characteristics of the missile, such as load effects, flutter, and stability.
The Cheonryong is understood to eventually offer performance that equals or exceeds the German-made Taurus Systems GmbH KEPD 350K precision‐attack cruise missile, which has been used by the RoKAF’s Boeing F-15K Slam Eagle strike aircraft since 2016. Two Taurus KEPD 350K missiles can be carried on ROKAF F-15Ks.
The Taurus KEPD 350K weighs nearly 1.4 tonnes and makes its way to the target at a very low terrain-following level aided by INS/GPS guidance. The missile contains a highly effective dual stage warhead system, with penetration capabilities for hard and deeply buried targets and blast-and-fragmentation capabilities against point and area targets.
Since 2018, South Korea has been seeking to develop its own long-range guided missiles to be equipped on the KF-21 Boramae multirole combat aircraft to carry out precision strikes on key enemy targets.
DAPA revealed that it plans to conduct further tests of the missile using a test FA-50 aircraft before qualifying it on a KF-21 prototype from 2027.
by Jr Ng
