Click to see full-size image. Via @RTErdogan on X.
Turkey’s KAAN, its first national fighter jet, completed its first flight on February 21, part of the country’s efforts to upgrade its air force and curb external dependency.
The fifth-generation stealth fighter jet, which was developed by the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), took off from an air base in north Ankara. Temel Kotil, the head of TAI, said KAAN stayed in the air for 13 minutes and reached a speed of 230 knots at an altitude of 8,000 feet.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that the flight marked another “critical threshold” in the development of the KAAN.
“We experienced one of the proud days of the Turkish defense industry. Our homegrown combat aircraft, KAAN, successfully completed its first flight today. Turkey crossed another critical threshold in producing a fifth-generation fighter jet,” Erdoğan told an event in the western Afyonkarahisar province.
He added that Turkey’s homegrown fighter jet soared into the skies despite “those who dismissively compared parts of it to a radiator” and those trying to “sabotage” the project.
Turkey launched its TF-X project to produce a national fighter jet in 2016. TAI signed a deal with Britain’s BAE Systems worth $125 million in 2017 to develop the fifth-generation aircraft.
The first prototype of the KAAN performed taxi and ground tests on 16 March 2023 and was ceremonially rolled out two days later.
The KAAN will reportedly be capable of air-to-air combat with advanced weapons and precision strikes from internal weapon mounts at supersonic speed and will provide increased combat power with artificial intelligence and neural network support.
The fighter jet will initially be powered by two American-made General Electric F-110 engines. However, Turkey aims to use domestically produced engines in the production model.
The KAAN sought to replace the aging F-16 fleet in the inventory of the Turkish Air Force, which is planned to be phased out starting in the 2030s.
Last year, Kotil said that TAI expects to deliver twenty KAAN fighter jets to the air force in 2028, then two aircraft per month by 2029. However, he warned that the price tag of the aircraft may surpass his 2021 promise of $100 million per unit.
The KAAN is without a doubt Turkey’s most ambitious project to date. While the country has already made some serious breakthroughs in the development of the fighter jet, the project is still far from being over. Even countries with decades-long experience in aerospace engineering like the United States and Russia took a long time to resolve issues related to the development of fifth-generation fighter jets.
