14 December 2022: Bayraktar KIZILELMA first flight
25 April 2023: HÜRJET first flight
27 October 2023: Bayraktar TB3 first flight
28 December 2023: ANKA-III first flight
21 February 2024: KAAN first flight
Turkey Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
14 December 2022: Bayraktar KIZILELMA first flight
25 April 2023: HÜRJET first flight
27 October 2023: Bayraktar TB3 first flight
28 December 2023: ANKA-III first flight
21 February 2024: KAAN first flight
5 new aircraft in 14 months. One would need to dig in coldwar aviation history to find an equivalent pace.
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.
Relatively speaking it is "massive" compared with some other aircrafts. Kaan's rear takes design cues from F-35 such as back swept vertical stablizer and almost no gap between horizontal stablizers and main wings. J-35 also moved away from FC-31's initial design to similar effect.
The opposite is KF-21, FC31 version 1
The difference is that in Kaan (F-35, J-35), the back sweeping vertical stablizer and closely coping of main wing block the air flow to the upper surface of the horizontal stablizer in higher AOA, reducing its efficiency, therefor needing bigger size.
KF-21 and FC-31 v1 have a large gap, in high AOA there is still enough air flowing over the upper surface of the horizontal stablizer. Their forward sweeping rear edge of the vertical stablizer further reducing the blocking effect. So their relative smaller size provides enough leverage.
It is interesting that F-22's horizontal stablizer seems smaller than Kaan, but F-22's TVC helps a lot and it is preferred way of working.
