The Republic of Korea Air Force (RoKAF), the official name of South Korea’s air force, has faced significant difficulties with its two new squadrons of Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighters, 40 of which have been delivered to meet an order placed in 2014 with 20 more currently on order to form a third squadron.
According to air force data obtained by Shin Won-min, a member of the South Korean National Assembly’s National Defense Committee, inspections have found the F-35s suffered from 234 flaws over 18 months from January 2021 to June 2022. These included 172 “non-flying status” (G-NORS) and 62 “cannot perform specific mission status” (F-NORS) cases. The data recorded 117 flightless and 45 mission-specific failures in 2021, and there was little improvement in the first half of 2022, with 55 and 17 failures of these types occurring over six months. The specific mission failure rates are notably more than twice those of South Korea’s Vietnam War era F-4 and F-5 fighters, the former of which is being directly replaced by the F-35.