An F-15K fighter jet on Wednesday that went missing during a routine nighttime training mission off the East Sea is believed to have crashed, the Air Force said.

At 7:45 p.m., one F-15K aircraft left a Taegu air base for a regular training sortie, but suddenly disappeared from the radar at around 8:20 p.m., an Air Force spokesman said, adding that the fates of two pilots on the aircraft have not been confirmed yet.
The Air Force immediately dispatched helicopters to the waters off Pohang, some 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, to search for the aircraft, he said.
The F-15K is the country’s next-generation fighter jet. Under the $5.5-billion deal struck in 2002, code-named ``F-X,’’ U.S. aircraft giant Boeing started delivering 40 F-15Ks to South Korea last year. Four F-15Ks have been delivered so far with the remaining 36, including 14 this year, scheduled to arrive here in stages by 2008.
The Air Force has decided to purchase 20 more F-15K multi-role aircraft beginning in 2009.
The state-of-the-art fighter jets will be deployed in the field for operational flights in 2007, according to the Air Force.
The F-15K, an advanced derivative of the U.S. Air Force F-15E, is capable of performing air-to-ground, air-to-air and air-to-sea missions day or at night, under any weather conditions.
The long-range fighter can carry over 23,000 pounds of weapons, including the Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Responses cruise missile, the satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions, anti-ship Harpoon missiles and AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. The aircraft, measuring 19.45 meters in length and 13.05 meters in width, flies at a maximum speed of Mach 2.3 and incorporates up-to-date military technologies such as a helmet-mounted cueing system and third-generation navigation and targeting systems.

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nati...2283511950.htm

I pray for the pilots but on the upside at least it crashed on the east side of Korea and not the west if you follow my drift.

They should be alright, the fishing fleets in that area have extensive patrols and finding ejected pilots shouldn't be too difficult.

Once the pilots are sorted the next concern is making sure that piece of hardware doesn't end up being reversed engineered.

I sure hope those aviators are alright.