Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
The contract appears to launch full-scale development of the KF-X with assistance from Indonesia. But it is unclear whether KAI can make much progress in 2016, since the defense ministry has secured very modest funding for the coming 12 months.
At least some of the improvements for the T-50 that KAI is developing for the T-X program, notably the inflight-refueling module, should become lasting assets for KAI, and not just for the trainer version of the type.
