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.
China’s first business aircraft, the five-seat Primus 150, is progressing toward first flight following the delivery last year of its GE Aviation H85 turboprop engine. “It’s in the process of being installed in the airframe” by Avic general-aviation subsidiary Caiga in Zhuhai, says Brad Mottier, vice president and general manager of business and general aviation for GE Aviation. Ranging from 750- to 850-shp, the Czech-built H80 family has been selected on three programs in China, including the Primus 150 and Hongdu N5B crop duster.
If South Korea builds its proposed KF-X stealth fighter, it will need to export it. So one key question hanging over the much-delayed project is whether the country can build the aircraft cheaply enough and attract adequate demand. Another is whether South Korea can build it at all.
Bradley Perrett (Seoul and Jeongseon, South Korea)
For most of the Cold War, Britain built or tried to build large fighters and strike aircraft that it believed were needed to face the Soviet threat. France consistently built smaller, cheaper fighters that it could export. So whereas English Electric and its successor company made 338 powerful Lightning fighters, which had an empty weight of about 13 metric tons (29,000 lb.), Dassault made 1,401 contemporary Mirage IIIs, which were half as large.
