It will remain a perfect aero show bird for at least 5 years. Probably more 10 years before having a fighter with a decent and integrated weapon system.
The first flight of the Turkish prototype of the fifth generation fighter KAAN took place today. The KAAN fighter has been developed by Turk Ucak Sanayi since 2017. The KAAN fighter should replace the American-made Turkish F-16 fighters and may compete with the F-35 and F-22 aircraft. The Ukrainian Air Force also plans to purchase the KAAN fighter. It is worth noting that the development of the fighter will continue until 2028, then they plan to begin its serial production. Developers need to improve the active phased array radar and aircraft engines. At the moment, the aircraft cannot carry out supersonic flight at cruising speed; engine development is one of the most difficult stages in the development of the aircraft. The flight of the KAAN fighter lasted 13 minutes, it reached an altitude of 2400 meters and a speed of 425 km/h.
Another potential option for Pakistan in the 2030s. Assuming the Turks are able to localize all the components.
Regardless, really good development time. They started this in 2010 and overhauled the program after getting booted from the F-35 program in 2019 right? Bright future for Turkish defence industry with this pace of growth.
Not impressive for a first flight.
Rafale A was supersonic at first flight, and reach 5G. Not the same maestria.....
I have seen a very nervous horizontail tail at the very early airborn phase. It has to be fine tune.
Lack 2 jewels in the turkish bag : engine and radar.
Engine is a hard and long goal (see how many times it took to china just to copy and paste russian engine... See India with a non fully airworthy Kaveri). Their MBT BATU engine, a far far less challenging project, is a clear indication that they are not technically mature enough.
Radar : it is one thing to built a ground or ship based radar and another to serailly built a fighter engine : stress on space, stress on electrical consumption, stress on colling, stress everywhere ! It take 10 years to the bests to study a new radar, with limited capacity (mainly air to air) and then, release after realease, new modes. I doubt the turks able to be on par with the bests.
So they will rely on west technologies for at least 2 decades. And west tech = embargo risk.
So two "jewels" that France doesn't lack and yet no stealth fighter, why? Look how easy it was for Turks and Koreans to built a stealth fighter when you keep it really basic.
Please don't say the Rafale can do the job because it obvious can't.
Turkey makes radars for UAVs though? They even have a GaN radar they use for their akinci drone. Will it take them another 10 years to scale it up for a fighter?
I do agree about the engines, it is not easy. I am confident they will get there sooner rather than later. I have a lot of hope for the Turkish defense industry in general. They have a real drive to innovate and a state apparatus that wants them to succeed.
Obviously they keeping it simple by doing nothing.
First SK. If we taking Tejas as a metric, for achieving IOC-1, ADA had to complete around 1000 flying hours, and for IOC-2 around 2500 flying hours. If SK able to achieve such feat within 4 years, that itself is an achievement. Rafale also I think had to go through this process. And after that, SK have to certify the radar too, add 500-700 hours for certifying all modes.
By there own claim, by 2026, they only able to achieve A-A modes. So much for simplicity. For stealth, last time I checked they were using this RCS facility
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By this you can deduct where things stand in stealth department.
Next Turkey, they dont even have a RCS facility, but claiming stealth. For radar, they don’t even have a flying test bed.
This is same like when Pakistani claimed this as there attack helicopter
But as several people believe in them as they keep things simple, let’s see what simplicity able to achieve.
Rafale is on duty for 20 years. It is selled to very demanding customers (UAE, Greece...) for the next 50 years. But these air forces probably are fool (note that Greece don't have ordered F35 so far. But it will come. This is the pizzo for uncle sam umbrella...)
Neuron stealth UCAV was made years ago, and a bigger derivative is to be offered to the Rafale customers in some years.
The first ever stealth frigate was french, yearS before a US counterpart (just 2 Zummwalt). Note that USN continues to ordered non stealth Arleigh Burke destroyer and remains reluctant to purchase F35.... strange no?
KAAN is YEARSSSS from beeing war ready. South Korea bird is not stealth as you expect : it carries loads externally.
For the rest, it is your famous french bashing. No more comment.
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Drone radar has only air to ground mode(s), on slow moving target, itself flying slowly. small to medium range.
The temperature and G load stress far less impressive.
No terrain mapping for very low flight : no risk of killing the pilot.
Not in the same league.
KAAN is too big for Turkey's first VLO fighter effort. They would need even more powerful engines than F-22 for the plane to reach its full potential. While KF-21 doesn't have IWB in its first iteration. So even if late, our AMCA will be better than both in every which way.
I have seen on another forum that KAAN is bigger than F22. True?
If it is the case I don't understand why Turkey needs a so big fighter, and indeed F110 engine may be short.
AMCA & KAAN are two very different aircraft designed for very different roles. KAAN is an air-superiority platform like F-22 while AMCA is a multi/swing-role platform like F-35. How far TAI gets with their engine program remains to be seen, currently their plan for developing a next-gen engine is pretty similar to ours: tie up with an established maker and see how much they're willing to share. Understandably, their intended JV engine is going to be a more powerful one than what is sufficient for AMCA.
AMCA even in its Mk-1 form is over a decade away from IOC. The KF-21 that would be flying by that time is going to be very different to the one that exists today:
I'd say they'd be pretty comparable. They'd be roughly the same size (25 ton MTOW), same 4x AAM internal bay and using the same engine (GE F414).
AMCA Mk2's next-gen engine is a pie in the sky at the moment, we realistically won't be inducting it before 2040. Best not waste too much thought on it - when it happens, it'll happen. If it happens.
As others have stated it really depends on timeframe. I'm not sure how long it'll take the Turks to develop/JV an local engine option but the Koreans will almost certainly have a KF-21 version with an IWB by the time the AMCA is produced in any numbers.
How all 3 fighters commercially compete in the future also depends on timelines I guess. If a SEA nation wants a stealth fighter in the mid-late 2030s the AMCA might not even be an option.
I think once we dropped out of FGFA program, the requirements of AMCA project changed too. Now air superiority is a core requirement for the project. Plus KAAN being bigger than F-22 doesn't mean it will achieve Air Superiority better until they develop those next-gen engines.AMCA & KAAN are two very different aircraft designed for very different roles. KAAN is an air-superiority platform like F-22 while AMCA is a multi/swing-role platform like F-35. How far TAI gets with their engine program remains to be seen, currently their plan for developing a next-gen engine is pretty similar to ours: tie up with an established maker and see how much they're willing to share. Understandably, their intended JV engine is going to be a more powerful one than what is sufficient for AMCA.
AMCA even in its Mk-1 form is over a decade away from IOC. The KF-21 that would be flying by that time is going to be very different to the one that exists today:
I'd say they'd be pretty comparable. They'd be roughly the same size (25 ton MTOW), same 4x AAM internal bay and using the same engine (GE F414).
AMCA Mk2's next-gen engine is a pie in the sky at the moment, we realistically won't be inducting it before 2040. Best not waste too much thought on it - when it happens, it'll happen. If it happens.
KF-21 would be inducted quickly than AMCA, true; but if our project catches speed then we won't be that behind it, IMO. It's good that AMCA MK1 will have IWB right from the beginning. And "if" AMCA MK2 with next gen engines becomes a reality, then we'll have a fighter better than KF-21 for sure.
One would assume. But the changes we made to AMCA (like going from 20 to 25-ton MTOW) appear more in line with an increase in range/endurance rather than aimed at air superiority. But the internal weapon stations haven't increased & the planned powerplant class hasn't changed (we always intended on F414 from the start), so the kinematics are actually worse than before - unless it gets the next-gen engine.
In the form in which it passed CDR (with F414), it is really no different to the KF-21 in terms of performance or size. And the KF-21 is by no means an air superiority plane - that should answer your doubts.
Due to lack of a dedicated 5th gen air superiority platform, the AMCA would definitely be asked to do that role, but I'm not seeing how, if at all, we made it any better at that role than before just by virtue of airframe design.
It's just bigger in terms of overall size. But F-22 is still heavier & carries more internal weapons (8x compared to KAAN's 6x).
Better than what? F-22? No way - the Raptor has over half a century worth of aerospace know-how behind it whereas the Turks have just begun their journey. Not to mention even on paper the F-22 is still a better plane in terms of kinematics than the KAAN.
But better than AMCA in air superiority? Even with the existing F110 engines, KAAN still enjoys a considerably better TWR than the AMCA + it carries 6x air to air weapons internally as opposed to AMCA's 4x.
So on paper, yes KAAN is a better air superiority fighter than AMCA.
The one aspect where I suspect AMCA could hold the advantage is with regard to the radar & avionics. We have had more experience in developing & operationalizing AESAs of our own design than the Turks, and that will translate into a potentially better, but certainly more refined/efficient FCR for the AMCA.
If my bicycle had a motor, it would be a motorcycle.
Jokes aside, I'm not concerned about 'catching up' with KF21 in terms of who does something first - I'm saying that (barring AMCA's next-gen engine program), the two platforms in their definitive state will be pretty similar in terms of capability.
Either way, South Korea isn't our adversary so that doesn't matter. China is our adversary, and they already have over a hundred stealth fighters in service, and several hundred more to come. Even Pakistan will be inducting its first FC-31 into operational service much before our AMCA even achieves IOC.
That's who we are competing with. And we're already well behind.
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I am not so sure about that. The timelines doesnt fit. Fifth generation fighters are harder to develop, and far harder to do mass produce.
It is not like just use 4.5 gen fighter's airframe and voila, converting KF-21 to FGFA going to be far harder, then some people believe. They going to need to rebuild PVs again, and test it again. And then atleast 7-8 years (7000 hours) of testing going to be required. There are no shortcuts for these things.
Again, mid-2030 timelines which coming from our friends are marketing gimmick, that is as much believable as much, ADA in 2021 claims of first flight of AMCA by 2024. And leave alone Turks, they havent even completed CDR. They dont even have a RCS facility to measure stealth features of an aircrafts, god knows without it how they built first PV. And how they claiming it stealth without knowing RCS.
Air-superiority doesnt always mean bigger is better, and next-gen engine doesnt always mean higher thrust or higher TWR. 5 gen engine vs 4 gen engine is not always about thrust. And we also need to focus on TBO and TTSL, these figures win you the war, not thrust, if 5% thrust is lower or 5% is higher doesnt matter much in bigger picture. But how many sorties you able to do during high tempo & for how long, how you are integrating your sensors, how you able to achieve air superiority utilizing such sensors, and more importantly how you acieve objectives with the force-mix you have.
On next pont, these are models of AMCA and IWB, were shown in various Aero India & DefExpo
They always show IWB with LGB/smart-bombs and with external weapons, this is multi-role capability.
And BTW what is air-superiority, in MKI we going from air-superiority to multirole (after upgrade). Does the air-superiority missions of MKIs become harder after upgrade?
it took 7000 flying hours to develop F-22, while 14000 hours for F-35. So which is harder?
KF-21 is going to be on level of Tejas Mk2 or MKI UPG. And you be doing mass production of 4.5 gen fighters on similar level. Why we comparing KF-21 with AMCA, the better comparision should be with Tejas Mk2.
In a sense they wont even start working on 5th gen fighter before 2030, in a worst case you be rolling out AMCA's first PV by 2030.
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It is very interesting and clever this KF21 developpment in 3 blocks.AMCA & KAAN are two very different aircraft designed for very different roles. KAAN is an air-superiority platform like F-22 while AMCA is a multi/swing-role platform like F-35. How far TAI gets with their engine program remains to be seen, currently their plan for developing a next-gen engine is pretty similar to ours: tie up with an established maker and see how much they're willing to share. Understandably, their intended JV engine is going to be a more powerful one than what is sufficient for AMCA.
AMCA even in its Mk-1 form is over a decade away from IOC. The KF-21 that would be flying by that time is going to be very different to the one that exists today:
I'd say they'd be pretty comparable. They'd be roughly the same size (25 ton MTOW), same 4x AAM internal bay and using the same engine (GE F414).
AMCA Mk2's next-gen engine is a pie in the sky at the moment, we realistically won't be inducting it before 2040. Best not waste too much thought on it - when it happens, it'll happen. If it happens.
They remove on difficult task from the beginning, the weapons bays, to later std.
On the contrary, KAAN is from the beginning a more complexe object, so more complex to fine tune.
On top of that, turk never developed a 4th gen from scratch and produce. KAAN is definitely over ambitious.