One step closer: Turkish F-35 alternative nears first flight

Turkish Aerospace Industries, known by its Turkish acronym TUSAŞ, released new footage showing the KAAN P1 fighter jet prototype successfully conducting powered taxi tests, confirming the aircraft has moved into ground testing ahead of its first flight.

KAAN is Türkiye’s fifth-generation stealth fighter program, a homegrown effort launched after the United States removed Türkiye from the F-35 program in 2019 over Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems, a decision that left the Turkish Air Force without a clear path to a next-generation combat jet and pushed the country to build its own instead.

Powered taxi testing means engineers run the aircraft’s engines at meaningful thrust levels and drive it along the runway under its own power, verifying brakes, steering, engine response, and basic ground handling before ever attempting to leave the ground, a standard but critical checkpoint in any new aircraft’s flight test buildup.

TUSAŞ is targeting P1’s first flight within a couple of months, with the company aiming to have both P1 and the third prototype, P2, actually flying by the end of 2026, giving the program two active flying test articles working in parallel rather than relying on a single aircraft to carry the entire flight test burden.

The first prototype, P0, made KAAN’s maiden flight back on February 21, 2024, functioning primarily as an engineering demonstrator to validate the jet’s basic aerodynamics and flight control software rather than serving as a fully combat-representative aircraft. P1 represents a considerably more mature design, incorporating structural and geometric refinements over P0 specifically intended to validate internal fuel and weapons volume, stealth shaping improvements, and full sensor integration, changes that push the aircraft much closer to what an actual production KAAN will eventually look like once it enters service.

KAAN is designed around a familiar fifth-generation stealth fighter profile, with a 14-meter (45.9 ft) wingspan, a 21-meter (68.9 ft) length, and a 6-meter (19.7 ft) height, built to reach a maximum cruising speed of Mach 1.8 and operate at altitudes up to 55,000 feet (16,764 m). Early production aircraft, including the current test prototypes, run on twin General Electric F110-GE-129 engines, the same engine family that powers Türkiye’s existing F-16 fleet, each delivering between 29,000 and 30,000 pounds of thrust (129 to 133 kN) with afterburner engaged, and Türkiye has already received 10 of these American-made engines to support prototype construction and early production. That reliance on a foreign engine remains a deliberate, temporary arrangement rather than a permanent design choice, with TUSAŞ and its subsidiary TUSAŞ Engine Industries developing an indigenous replacement called the TF35000, a domestically produced turbofan intended to power KAAN aircraft after an initial batch of between 20 and 40 jets fly with the American F110, gradually reducing Türkiye’s dependence on U.S. supply chains for a weapon system built explicitly to give the country strategic independence.

TUSAŞ General Manager Mehmet Demiroğlu has described the P1 flight test milestone as a genuine turning point for the broader KAAN program, distinguishing it from P0’s earlier engineering flights by framing P1 as the point where flight testing begins in what he called the aircraft’s real configuration, the production-representative design rather than an early proof-of-concept airframe. Demiroğlu has previously indicated Türkiye is building a total of three prototypes in this current phase, with additional aircraft planned to expand the testing campaign further as the program matures, splitting flight envelope expansion, avionics validation, and structural evaluation work across multiple airframes simultaneously rather than forcing all of that testing through a single jet with limited flight availability.

Serial production is currently planned to begin with a total order of 148 aircraft, and while detailed customer breakdowns remain limited, defense industry reporting has suggested Indonesia could account for as many as 48 of those units, reflecting growing international interest in the program from countries looking for a modern stealth fighter option outside the American and Russian supply chains that dominate the current export market. First deliveries to the Turkish Air Force remain targeted for 2028, a timeline that depends heavily on P1 and P2 clearing their flight test programs without the kind of significant delays that have historically plagued nearly every new fighter jet development effort worldwide, from the F-35 itself to earlier European fighter programs.