- You really expect China to supply 45 kN-class engines for the product of a NATO member?
- Integrating a different engine would take just as long for production aircraft anyway.
- If Baykar ever needs an alternative engine in the meantime, they’d most likely knock on RR’s door first.
Even in its current form, Kızılelma is quite underpowered to the extent that, even with all the composites Baykar specializes in using for their aircraft, it is still
literally the size of an F-16.
Even with all that fancy GaN-radar and IRST/EOTS/whatever else they've integrated, it's still got a cruise-speed of 0.6 Mach/top-speed of 0.9 Mach and is therefore rubbish in BVR against capable aircraft.
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Baykar even canned its supersonic twin-engine version in favor of a single 89 kN-class (i.e., an F404-equivalent) engined one and has begun preparing to develop and produce it in-house (since TEI is entirely focused on delivering the TF35K and TF6K/10K). They aim to vertically develop everything, much like Chinese tech companies do, they’re called
Baykar Tech for a reason.