TR Air-Force TF-X KAAN Fighter Jet

[Pokemonte13]

The

This is excellent news about the F110 engines moving forward. This covers one of the most fragile points in all of Turkish defense industry projects and carries the program until 2032-2033 when the indigenous engine is scheduled to be ready. It seems the usual ethnic lobbies in the Congress won't be able to get the majority required to block the process and it will move forward. I hope the deliveries happen with a reasonable timeline.

It's a bit concerning, though, what they said about an agreement about S-400 being done. We have long had a good policy of keeping the S-400 and insisting on F-35s. I hope that continues.

It’s a law specifically designed to target countries/governments that buy Russian military hardware. Even if they wanted they couldn’t and it’s not like s400 is really that important to our air defence too few systems and not enough performance (lacks an iff etc). What we could learn about the f35 is much higher

 

[godel44]

The

It’s a law specifically designed to target countries/governments that buy Russian military hardware. Even if they wanted they couldn’t and it’s not like s400 is really that important to our air defence too few systems and not enough performance (lacks an iff etc). What we could learn about the f35 is much higher

I don’t disagree. The S-400 is not very useful for us and the CAATSA provisions require them to certify it has been removed irretrievably.

 

[Pete Mitchell Maverick]

I expect the S-400 issue to be discussed at the NATO Summit in Ankara and for significant progress to be made.


The fact is that we have not benefited from the S-400s at all; on the contrary, they have caused us considerable harm. I wonder who made this decision, why it was made, and what kind of reasoning led us to it.

 

[Zafer]

I expect the S-400 issue to be discussed at the NATO Summit in Ankara and for significant progress to be made.


The fact is that we have not benefited from the S-400s at all; on the contrary, they have caused us considerable harm. I wonder who made this decision, why it was made, and what kind of reasoning led us to it.

It saved us from spending our money on F35 instead of the Kaan. Not only money but the unreliability trap. We only want a small number of F35 for NATO operations. The seemingly unwanted outcome actually suits us very well.

 

[Pete Mitchell Maverick]

It saved us from spending our money on F35 instead of the Kaan. Not only money but the unreliability trap. We only want a small number of F35 for NATO operations. The seemingly unwanted outcome actually suits us very well.

I'm not a big fan of the F-35, but no matter what, our enemies already have this aircraft in their inventory, and another one will acquire it soon. For that reason, I believe that owning 2-3 squadrons of F-35s would be to our advantage rather than having none at all.

But the real problem, as I said, is the S-400s. Buying them was a huge mistake, and I'm curious what kind of logic pushed us to acquire systems that we've never used, cannot use, and are now desperately trying to get rid of. The current government is working right now to somehow dispose of this system and acquire a few squadrons of F-35s in return.

 

[Zafer]

I'm not a big fan of the F-35, but no matter what, our enemies already have this aircraft in their inventory, and another one will acquire it soon. For that reason, I believe that owning 2-3 squadrons of F-35s would be to our advantage rather than having none at all.

But the real problem, as I said, is the S-400s. Buying them was a huge mistake, and I'm curious what kind of logic pushed us to acquire systems that we've never used, cannot use, and are now desperately trying to get rid of. The current government is working right now to somehow dispose of this system and acquire a few squadrons of F-35s in return.

No they are not trying to dispose of them they are trying to get the other side to disregard their existence. Our enemies have the fighter and can use them but we can have them and not be able to use them which puts us to a losing position where we could have as many Kaan, even more instead.

I would spend all the money on Kaan development along with its engine and roll them out in 2029 no matter how mature the engine along with the Block 1 and 2. So by 2031 I would have 100 Kaan in the fleet which I think is more likely than not. With the supply chain problems no one is guarantied to supply you with what you need even if they wanted to. So we need to make multiple paths to Kaan engines like using different materials resulting in different qualities of engines. Even the poorer quality varieties will be better than a foreign engine.

 

[dBSPL]

Have the 6 F-35s been paid for? Yes. Then efforts should continue to either deliver these aircraft or compensate for the loss by delivering the same number of aircraft from current production blocks. Even if these aircraft are used in a mixed fleet within NATO missions, they can be very useful for tactical training; we can even use them as red-flag aircraft, and indigenous systems can be tested against them technically and tactically.

Beyond that, I believe the main condition for a meaningful order size (max 2 fleets A, 1 fleet B) is ensuring some kind of return on industrial participation. If it won't contribute to the Turkish defense industry anymore (we thank them for their initial contributions), we should continue to focus resources on KAAN and unmanned programs.