The origins of this fighter could be traced back to 1979 when, by pressures from the People's Republic of China, the US Government stoped sending fighter airplanes to the Republic of China (Taiwan) government. Pressures that became real when in 1981 the US materialized the lack of deliveries.
As the ROC needed a modern fighter to replace and suplement their already aging Northrop F-5E and their Lockheed F-104, they started to develop the Indigenous Defence Fighter (IDF) in 1982 with technological help from the American General Dynamics company, the same company that had designed and manufactured some years earlier the famous F-16. That assistance ended with the materialization of the Ching-Kuo which blatantly ressembled the aforementioned F-16 Fighting Falcon.
Originaly it was going to be powered by a single engine, but there wasn't any suitable engine available so two ITEC TFE1042-70 afterburning turbofans were used developed from the Garrett/Allied signal TFE731, each of them having 4309kgp maximum thrust and a military thrust of 2749kgp all of them fed by fixed by geometry intakes under the LERX. Wing was high-placed in order to clear the intake ducts and differs from that of the F-16 in having a pronounced forward edge sweep on the trailing edge. On the control systems, the triple FBW was used.
The single-seater pre-production airplane flew for the first time on 28th May 1989 but it wasn't until 1995 that it achieved operational capability. Regarding avionics, the radar, that was developed in the west, is a Golden Dragon 53 which is based on the Westinghouse APG-67(V). It is armed with a 20mm M61 Vulcan cannon, four heat homing Sky Sword I, and two Sky Sword II missiles, these last two carried in tandem under the centerline. Initially 350 of them were ordered to the Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation 50 of them being the two-seater version. When the production halted in the year 2000 just 102 single-seaters and 28 two-seaters had been built.
Sources:
1. The Complete Book of Fighters
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDC_F-CK-1_Ching-kuo
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_Air_Force
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