Taiwanese Air Force upgrades its fleet of Indigenous Defence Fighters
The Taiwanese Air Force will upgrade its fleet of 126 locally-built multirole Indigenous Defence Fighters (IDF), also referred to as F-CK-1 Ching Kuo, to enable them to penetrate and attack enemy anti-air defence networks. This follows on from the 2009 $587million midlife upgrade for the entire fleet that extended the fleet’s service life for another 20 years.
The IDF fleet was built in the early 1990s by Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC) with cooperation from Lockheed Martin. It consists of two variants: the single-seat A and two-seat B models. The new update will bring the fleet up to C- and D- level variants with improvements to the aircrafts avionics, radar, flight software and an introduction of an entirely new range of precision weaponry designed by the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST).