South Korea now makes a fighter jet?
 

Wow. They are cheaper and selling them to various countries?

What's going to happen to NATO countries buying form us? We no longer have that market cornered? I know nothing about this type of business or market. That's a lot of money lost for us. Just asking

F-15 has a 104 to 0 kill ratio. Korea has a way to go.

If you want a serious fighter plane, you buy an F22.

The US is selling 5th generation fighters capable of stealth and smart weapons employment. These systems are designed to operate in a peer to peer conflict with modern air defenses such as those operated by the PRC and Russia. The homebuilt Korean fighter is smart weapons capable but cannot operate in such environments. In their minds they don't have to face such threats if they ever decide to go north of the MDL. The business model is to equip their own air force (ROKAF) with some of these airplanes and offer them for sale to countries who who don't need all of the technology and can't afford an F/A-22 or an F-35.

The Korean jet is also years away from being fielded. Remember how long it took Lockheed Martin to get the F35 mission capable? Who do you think is more talented, KAI or LMCO? Paper airplanes are easy, real airplanes are hard.

The will be political pressure to buy from us if they want favorable relations concerning other other needs.

According to this these have been operational for years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAI_T-50_Golden_Eagle

If you notice, they were co-developed with Lockheed Martin and use US weapons. I think they fill a slot below what the US offers but still sends some money our way.

Only a handful of F-22s were made and forbidden for sale outside the US.

Countries have lots of options from various nations to purchase fighters outside of the US (or Russia). F-15s are fantastic fighters but horribly expensive except for the wealthiest of nations (Saudi Arabia, Israel, Japan).

Two different planes here guys. The T-50 is a supersonic trainer and very basic tactical aircraft, something like our T-38 that is being retired. The KF-X is a close to 5th generation fighter that hasn’t even flown yet. I assumed we were talking about the KF-X.

I was surprised to see the https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_T-50 being compared to the https://military.wikia.org/wiki/KAI_T-50_Golden_Eagle

They have the same name.....T-50.

The first is a true 5th gen stealth fighter.
The second is the offspring of the F-16 and a T-38.

We have explored the sale of 22 fighters to three countries. I bet a deal could be done, if conditions were right.