KUH-1 Surion
ICAO SURNSouth Korea's home-built medium helicopter, developed with Airbus. Live KUH-1 Surion positions.
Flying right now
Live · 30s
No KUH-1 Surion is transmitting ADS-B at the moment.
Military aircraft are not obliged to broadcast, so this happens regularly. The count refreshes every thirty seconds.
Airframe
- Manufacturer
- Korea Aerospace Industries
- Role
- Medium utility helicopter
- Class
- H2T — Helicopter, 2 turboshaft engines
- Crew
- 4
- First flight
- 10 March 2010
- In service
- 2013
Operators airborne
Nothing of this type is up right now.
About the KUH-1 Surion
The Surion is South Korea's first indigenous helicopter, developed with Airbus Helicopters as the technology partner and drawing on Super Puma design work. It replaced the ageing UH-1H and 500MD fleets in Korean army service.
Variants have proliferated quickly: a marine assault version with folding rotors, a police helicopter, a coastguard search and rescue model, and a medical evacuation version. It is one of the more visible pieces of Korea's effort to build a domestic aerospace industry.
Almost every airframe is Korean, so the aircraft on this page will be too, and coverage over the peninsula is patchier than over Europe.
Callsign prefixes
- ROKAF
- Republic of Korea armed forces
- POLICE
- Korean National Police aviation
How to recognise it
- —A medium twin with a four-blade main rotor and fixed wheels.
- —A boxy cabin with sliding doors and a squared-off nose.
- —Family resemblance to the Super Puma around the engine deck and tailboom.
Common questions
+ Who makes the Surion?
Korea Aerospace Industries, with Airbus Helicopters as development partner. It is South Korea's first domestically developed helicopter.
+ What does the Surion replace?
The Korean army's UH-1H Iroquois and MD 500 fleets. Marine, police, coastguard and medical variants have since been developed from the same airframe.
+ Is it exported?
Not widely. Korea has marketed it internationally with limited success so far; the overwhelming majority of airframes serve Korean government and military operators.