Meanwhile our own air force have not even ordered the trainer variant yet and literally no official interest for the LCA.
Unfortunately, I think that this situation may have a negative reflection on the foreign market.
Trainer has been ordered? Its also no suprise that the Air Force has no interest in the LCA version. They might order a handful a symbolic gesture but other than that the Air Force is interested in force multipliers (Kaan,F-35. EF T4/5, F-16V70)
For this very reason, we can say that developing LCA with the same engine configuration as AJT would not be the right approach in terms of domestic needs. For the foreign market, an FA-50 equivalent system may emerge, but in the foreign market, I think the TAF reference will be decisive, and the competitiveness of an aircraft that our own air force will not buy may remain limited in the foreign market.
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The max payload capacity for the latest F-16s should ultimately be around 16-18K lb, although maneuverability may be reduced by up to 5g. The most important question for me here is to what extent the configuration consisting of the Özgür-2+AESA suite and the indigenous weapons group is equivalent to the Viper B70. Because with this configuration and an infrastructure that can be more compatible with KAAN, the only thing needed to bring the Hürjet fuselage to an electronically equivalent level will be a slightly more powerful engine configuration.
In my humble opinion, with an engine like the F414s, an aircraft with a similar mission range can be created, perhaps with the only shortcoming that the maximum payload capacity will be 12-14 thousand pounds instead of 16-17 , but as a typical payloads configs, it can operate in the desired flight profiles as like main combatants. F-16s have 1+2+6 hardpoints as well as extra hardpoints for the mission pod. Another shortcoming would be to give up at least 2 hardpoints. But this deficiency can be overcome with multiple pylons and increased under-fuselage carrying capacity for some scenarios, as in the Gripen. Having our own airframe, which is actually not such a small platform, opens up a very important room for work in it, but time will tell how much we will be able to use it. Because it all boils down to the engine issues.
on ppl.
