Turkey's Kaan fighter jet takes to the skies, marking a new era in aviation

The Turkish next-generation fighter jet, Kaan, made its maiden flight today. Despite numerous delays, Turkey's achievement is significant. The entire fighter development programme is advancing at an impressive rate. With Kaan, its manufacturer, Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), joins the elite group of global aviation conglomerates capable of producing modern combat aircraft.

Kaan – previously known as TF-X and MMU (National Combat Aircraft) – spent thirteen minutes in the air without retracting its landing gear. During this time, it reached an altitude of 2,438 metres (about 8,000 feet) and a speed of 424 kilometres per hour (about 265 miles per hour). Throughout the flight, an F-16D fighter accompanied the prototype. Upon landing, Kaan used a drag parachute.

Having completed a full cycle of static tests last autumn, Kaan was scheduled to make its maiden flight on 27 December. However, TAI engineers fell behind schedule and did not conduct even preliminary taxiing trials in 2023. The flight was initially announced for January, but as it turned out, we had to wait until the last week of February.

The fighter is designed to replace the Turkish fleet of F-16C/D in the fourth decade of the 21st century. Kaan will be a multirole fighter, with a particular emphasis on air-to-air combat. The Turkish Air Force currently has about 240 F-16s, and the production scale for the Turkish Air Force is expected to be similar.

Although the Kaan prototype employs General Electric F110 engines, borrowed from the F-16, this is merely a temporary solution – readily available since F110s are produced under license in Turkey, providing a ready stock. Ankara has requested US permission for co-production of F110 engines for the first batch of Kaans. However, the aircraft is expected to eventually be equipped with a domestic power unit, to be developed in collaboration with Rolls-Royce. Turkey aims to retain full rights to all – or at least all key – components, to avoid dependency on anyone when signing contracts with foreign clients.

In July last year, it was announced that Azerbaijan would join the Kaan project. This was hardly a surprise, as Azerbaijan is Turkey’s closest ally, almost a younger brother. Azerbaijan's former president Heydər Əliyev (father of the current president, İlham) used to say that Turks and Azerbaijanis are one nation living in two countries. The current relationship between Ankara and Baku continues in this spirit.

Although it was stated that Baku would contribute substantially to the project when announcing the cooperation, in practice, this mainly involves financial contribution – similar to Indonesia's participation in the South Korean KF-X programme. Jakarta and Baku are investing, among other things, to gain access to capabilities that their local defence industries could not develop on their own.

Formally, the MMU programme started in 2010, but conceptual work did not begin until the following year. In 2019, during the Paris Air Show, a full-size mockup was unveiled. At that time, the maiden flight was only expected to occur by 2025, but soon after, the schedule was reorganised, and all stages of development were accelerated. The prototype's rollout and its first taxi tests took place on 18 March 2023.

Already in 2022, Turkish Aselsan presented the core of the sensor suite, namely an AESA radar station called Murad. It was developed as part of the domestic modernisation of Turkey-produced F-16C/D Block 30 under license. It is not yet known whether Kaan will be equipped with more sophisticated detection systems, such as the AN/AAR-56 known from the American Raptor, which warns of missile attacks on the aircraft. When TAI unveiled the finished prototype, attention was drawn to the sensor package in front of the cockpit canopy and under the nose. The former is probably a thermal imaging system, while the latter seems to resemble the Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS) present on the F-35 and is likely intended to serve the same purpose.

1,300 Turkish engineers, supported by 100 engineers from BAE Systems, are working on the TF-X project. Companies from other countries are also involved in the programme. Dassault Systèmes and Siemens provided the design software, and tests in wind tunnels were conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of South Africa.