TAI assembled F16 Fighting Falcons for Turkey and Egypt.
TAI also have the capability to upgrade F16s.
Assembly is basically a screw driver job , as we say in india .
We manufacture almost whole of su 30 mki in india from raw material and most components are manufactured in india , yet ut won't prepare us for amca ,as doing something indigenous is totally different .
Assembly can give you experience to manufacture those jet in good number but can't help you to create a rnd base .
You need new gen actuator , mission computer , radar based on GaN , wide band jammers , and all these systems should be based on GaN , then eots , das are a big hurdle .
Let me give you a example , in india , we have our amca program .
Ff was planned for 2023 but was delayed due to project complexity .
As we have seen , you will pass through same phases of development like any other country .
You will see basic tech first like ram coatings , then their advanced variant .
Ew module will be tough job as not only you have to create jammer ,you need to integrate them with digital rwr , decoys , maws ,lwr .
Then you need a huge database and high speed processing power to access and classify threats .
Radar need to have wide band capability so that it can perform shared aperture role somewhat .
We have our basic uttam radar , it's good system , compete well on some tested parameters with elta elm 2052 , but for amca we need a new gen radar with GaN module ,work is being done on that but still it need 3-4 years .
Then comes some tech like body axis cone vivaldi etc , which can't be achieved in this limited time , india took years to develop these building blocks .
We developed a titanium superalloys , some peizeoelectric self healing material , etc for application in amca , these systems make fighter more maintenance friendly ,but research money expenditure is humongous , nobody have any idea except drdo and gov that how much have been spent .
Next come testbed aircraft ,which is generally a passenger plane modified for testing , we acquired it this year only and integration has started ,but i don't think turkey hace been on that stage yet .
So you need lot of time ,money and patience in these projects and delay are quite possible , so over optimistic views need to be calmed down