[Exclusive] 'F-35' Stealth Fighter Jets to Fire Live Ammunition Starting Next Year [Yang Nakgyu's Defence Club]

Resolution of Gun Barrel Cracking Issue and Contract for 25,000 Rounds
Partial F-35 Gun Defects to Be Reinforced by 2025

Our Air Force's latest F-35A stealth fighter jet will begin live ammunition firing from next year. The machine gun is the most basic weapon system for air-to-air and air-to-ground attacks, but until now, live firing was not possible due to barrel cracking issues when firing live rounds.

On the 5th, a military official told Asia Economy in a phone interview, “We resolved the barrel cracking issue of the F-35A’s machine gun and signed a contract on the 30th of last month to procure about 25,000 rounds from Swiss company Rheinmetall, which produces live ammunition,” adding, “Live firing will be possible starting next year.”

On the 27th, at the media day for the 71st Armed Forces Day ceremony held at Daegu Air Force Base, the main weapons of the armed forces, including the stealth fighter F-35A, were displayed. Photo by Kim Hyun-min, Daegu kimhyun81@

Our military selected the next-generation fighter model as the F-35A from the U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin and has been sequentially acquiring 40 units starting with the first unit on March 1, 2018. However, in July of the following year, the U.S. government discovered a cracking problem in the machine gun during live firing and recommended halting live ammunition firing. The reason was that if the gun cracks, fragments could be sucked into the engine, making flight impossible and degrading stealth performance.

As a result, the military was unable to conduct live firing for 5 years and 9 months after the first unit was introduced. In October last year, in response to a show of force by 150 North Korean military aircraft,

F-35A fighters were deployed but only training ammunition was loaded in the machine guns, not live rounds, which sparked controversy.

Among the 40 F-35As currently acquired, units 25 to 40 have reinforced machine gun defects. Units 1 to 24 have been under repair at Lockheed Martin since last September. The military expects to resolve all machine gun defects by 2025.

Meanwhile, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration held the 157th Defense Acquisition Promotion Committee meeting yesterday and decided to procure an additional 20 F-35As by 2028 as part of the second phase of the next fighter (F-X) project, worth 4.0266 trillion won. A military official stated, “By securing additional high-performance stealth fighters, we will enhance independent deterrence and response capabilities against asymmetric threats such as nuclear weapons and missiles, and establish national-level overhaul capabilities including full repainting, contributing to improved aircraft availability and reduced operation and maintenance costs.”