South Korea plans to arm its FA-50 light combat fighters with new variant of the Taurus missile.

"If the FA-50s are armed with mid-range Taurus missiles, it will enhance their combat power as well as exportability," another official said.

The original version, the Taurus KEPD 350, has a range in excess of 500 km. The TAURUS KEPD 350 is a modular stand-off missile system for precision strikes against hardened and high-value point and area targets. The KEPD 350 missile is designed and developed to fly through dense air defences at a very low, terrain-hugging level and kill high-value targets. The missile contains a highly effective 480 kg dual stage warhead system MEPHISTO, which combines excellent penetration capabilities for hard and deeply buried targets (HDBT) with blast-and-fragmentation capabilities against point and area targets.

The weapon system contains the only available Programmable Intelligent Multi-Purpose Fuze (PIMPF), enabling detonation of the penetrator at a pre-selected floor inside the target structure by utilizing unique layer counting and void sensing technologies. The TAURUS KEPD 350 has a Tri-Tec navigation system that utilizes three independent sensor systems - GPS Navigation, Terrain Reference Navigation and Infrared Image Based Navigation. This is a feature which ensures highly robust navigation and exact delivery to the target even within a GPS Jammed environment.

Two batches of 20 and 40 KAI FA-50 light attack aircraft are on order to progressively replace the aging F-5Es. ROKAF pilots are also flying on 60 F-15Ks and 180 F-16C/D fighter aircraft.