You trade off range and endurance for speed when you go for a turbofan/turbojet engine. For most drones loitering time and range are more important than speed.
Turkey Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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You trade off range and endurance for speed when you go for a turbofan/turbojet engine. For most drones loitering time and range are more important than speed.
Turkey to make its own maritime missile-launching system after sanctions interrupt Lockheed plans
“The FMS was not approved for using the U.S.-made Mk 41 as a vertical launch system for the Milgem [naval project’s] fifth ship. Thus, we inked an agreement with Roketsan and rearranged the contract so that Roketsan will develop the VLS,” Kose told Turkish media.
A source with a subcontractor working on the project told Defense News that the MDAS will be similar to the Mk 41. “However, it has some structural differences, like its height. MDAS will be 8 meters long — 30 centimeters longer than Mk 41,” the source said on condition of anonymity.
“The system will be capable of embarking and launching indigenous missiles, including HİSAR surface-to-air missile family ... and ATMACA anti-ship missiles,” the source added. “Turkey has gained enough know-how experience to develop an indigenous missile-launching system in the last decade. We have been working on the MDAS project and aim to make it ready before the acceptance trials of TCG Istanbul.”
Concerning TFX here is an interesting post at the SecretProjectsForum via Maro.Kyo:
- basically confirms the first airframe to roll out in 2023 is more a mock up
- CDR is around a 1 1/2 year after this "roll out"
- real roll out of an actual flight-ready EMD protoype is in 2025
Not much has changed about the overall program schedule, just some shoveling of dates. But again, time wil tell.
I have an interesting comment from TheInsider at defencehub.live
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Skywatcher
Captain
Hmm, maybe the 2023 airframe would be more of a tech demonstrator, a la YF-22/X-2 Shinshin? It flies a couple times in 2024-25 for PR/avionics validation reasons, and then gets shuffled off to perform flights for manned/unmanned R&D + testing, while the 2025+ airframes do the vast majority of the flight testing.
As for the engine, wouldn't the first several dozen or so TFXs use foreign engines until the domestic version becomes available in the mid 2030s?
Yes, for the first variants of the TF-X, the blocks 0 and 1. Depending on how successful the development of the engine will be, some of the Block 1 might have indigenous engines, but later blocks surely will have them.
I think that the indigenous engine will most likely resemble the F110-GE-129/132. Turkey has a lot of experience on this engine in part production, full assembly, maintenance and testing. Furthermore they've developed critical technologies for the production of single crystal HP turbine blades capable of handling temperatures of 1400* Celsius and are currently working on blades capable of handling higher temperatures.
The time between overhaul of the TS1400 engine will be at least 2500 TAC (Tactical Air Cycles/Total Accumulated Cycles) with 5000 TAC being the eventual goal. To put this into perspective, the TAC of the F110-GE-100 is 3000 hours, the B version raises that to 4000h and the F110-GE-129 raises it even further to 4300h. The TAC of the M88 used to be 2500h and was improved to 4000h. The TAC of the EJ200 is more than 6000h (more than 20000 TAC during its entire life with 2 major overhauls)
The hottest parts (HPT blades and combustion chamber) of a gas turbine engine are the most difficult parts. With Turkey achieving this technology, they've cleared the biggest obstacle for the development of various kinds of gas turbine engines.
Overal I'm more optimistic than pessimistic.