I cannot get over the feeling that this aircraft, as we see it today, has been made possible in large part by the Americans by denying F-35s to Turkey.
Thank you america for doing your part to Make Turkey Great Again !
I believe that, had the F-35 been in service with Turkey, the KAAN would be largely a prestige project today. The design would not have been so ambitious, the development speed would certainly have been significantly slower, and the Turkish government could conceivably at some point get cold feet on the project because the cost of bringing it into service is likely in the range of $20-40 billion (that is my guesstimate, of course).
As it is, denying F-35s to Turkey has been a gigantic blunder by the US.
The KAAN, as a fully domestic heavyweight air superiority stealth fighter, is the first benefit of this move to Turkey.
In a few years, when the Siper Block 2 and Block 3 complete development, we will see the other benefit because I expect that Turkey will want to have a domestic equivalent of the 9M96E2 and the 48N6E3 missiles from the S-400 system which they can now reverse engineer without worry.
Now TAI....get us that engine.