Turkey’s long-touted fifth-generation fighter jet, KAAN, has been promoted by Ankara as the moment the country “joins the club” of elite air powers. For foreign customers, however, the attraction is not so clear-cut. Behind the glossy rollouts and state-backed hype lies an uncomfortable reality: KAAN is an unfinished aircraft whose most critical dependency is controlled by a foreign government — and not one Turkey has consistently aligned with in recent years.
KAAN is real. It first flew in February 2024, remaining airborne for roughly 15 minutes. Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) has since conducted several additional test flights, marking a tangible industrial achievement for Turkey’s fast-expanding defense sector. Ankara aims to deliver roughly 20 “Block 10” aircraft to the Turkish Air Force between 2028 and 2029, with serial production envisioned through the 2030s.
On paper, KAAN is framed as Turkey’s entry into the fifth-generation arena dominated by the U.S.-built F-35. In practice, its advertised capabilities remain aspirational. The aircraft symbolizes something larger for Ankara: a demonstration of national ambition, and the flagship of a defense industry whose exports have surged to historic highs across Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Europe.
Yet beneath the narrative of national pride and strategic autonomy lies a structural vulnerability that Turkey cannot evade — propulsion.
Every KAAN prototype and all early production aircraft rely on the U.S.-built General Electric F110 turbofan engine. Under CAATSA sanctions imposed on Turkey after its acquisition of Russia’s S-400 air-defense system, these engines require a U.S. export license. Without Washington’s approval, KAAN cannot be mass produced, exported, or even reliably sustained.
In other words, the final veto does not sit in Ankara; it sits in Washington.
This dependency — long discussed quietly by analysts — became unavoidably public in late September 2025. Journalist Amberin Zaman reported that Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, speaking in New York, acknowledged that the F110 license “is stuck in Congress” and that without approval, “production of the KAAN cannot begin.” His candid remark triggered political turmoil at home. Officials scrambled to downplay or reinterpret his words, insisting that Turkey had “alternatives,” “backup plans,” and “multi-source approaches.”
None of that changed the engineering reality: KAAN’s early production run is entirely dependent on a U.S. engine governed by U.S. law.
Ankara is racing to break this dependency. TEI and TRMotor are jointly developing the TF-35000, a high-thrust domestic engine intended for integration into KAAN in the early 2030s. Ground tests are planned for the mid-2020s, with a flight-ready version optimistically targeted for 2032.
But fighter engines do not obey political timetables. They mature only after thousands of hours of thermal-cycle trials, compressor failures, redesigns, and endurance tests. Even if Turkey achieves a near-unprecedented acceleration of development — compressing what normally takes two decades into less than one — most export customers will still receive early KAAN variants powered by U.S.-licensed F110s.
For them, the political choke point remains.
Indonesia, likely KAAN’s first foreign buyer, faces this risk immediately. Jakarta has agreed to purchase 48 aircraft for approximately $10 billion, expecting technology transfer, pilot training, and eventual co-production of components. Yet most of those 48 fighters will require U.S. export-licensed engines.
That means that Washington — not Indonesia — will determine spare parts availability, maintenance timelines, upgrade approvals, and the overall operational readiness of Jakarta’s fleet.
This comes at a time when Indonesia is already managing a fragmented mix of fighters: Rafale, KF-21, and F-15ID. KAAN introduces yet another ecosystem, but one whose most critical subsystem can be halted instantly by a congressional committee in Washington.
Turkey’s relations with the United States and Europe remain volatile. The diplomatic landscape that surrounds KAAN is shaped by a long list of friction points: the S-400, northern Syria, Libya, tensions with Greece and Cyprus, human-rights disputes, and broader NATO politics. Under such conditions, a sudden escalation — whether in the Eastern Mediterranean, Syria, or domestic politics — could freeze KAAN’s engine supply overnight.
That risk extends to any foreign buyer: Jakarta, Islamabad, Baku, Cairo, or Gulf states.
Even if a Turkish engine eventually enters service, the structural problem does not vanish. KAAN’s architecture was developed with assistance from BAE Systems, and European subsystems, mission software structures, materials, and testing instrumentation run throughout the platform. Even with a Turkish engine, KAAN would remain exposed to multiple veto points scattered across the United States, the UK, and the EU.
Turkey has confronted foreign choke points before. The Bayraktar TB2 drone — marketed as a symbol of Turkish defense autonomy — relied on Rotax engines from Austria and WESCAM sensors from Canada. Both were abruptly halted in 2020 due to export restrictions. TB2 production slowed sharply until Turkish firms developed domestic replacements.
KAAN magnifies this problem dramatically. Grounding a drone affects battlefield tactics. Grounding a fighter fleet affects national strategy.
The KAAN program has also revived comparisons to Israel’s Lavi fighter. Developed in the 1980s, the Lavi was technologically groundbreaking and promised to reshape global fighter markets. It was not cancelled due to engineering failure — but because of U.S. pressure, spiraling costs, and domestic political division. In 1987, the Israeli cabinet ended the program by a single vote.
Israel received subsidized F-16s and F-15s, but relinquished the only pathway it ever had to a fully sovereign high-end fighter. The Lavi became a cautionary tale about the limits of medium-power ambition in a world of U.S. export controls.
KAAN carries echoes of that history. But unlike Israel in the 1980s, Turkey shows no willingness to back down. For Ankara, cancelling KAAN would be a symbolic and strategic retreat — one it refuses to contemplate.
Turkey’s own acquisition plans underscore this reality. Ankara is pursuing Eurofighter Typhoons, negotiating for Qatari and Omani Typhoons, pushing for F-16 Block 70s, and still attempting — unsuccessfully — to rejoin the F-35 program. These moves reflect an implicit admission that KAAN will not carry Turkey’s air-power burden alone for at least a decade.
Foreign buyers should take note.
KAAN is a national project Turkey will not cancel. Politically, symbolically, and industrially, it has become too important. But foreign governments do not share Ankara’s political calculus. They must ask the most fundamental question of all:
For KAAN today, the honest answer is: more actors, in more capitals, than with almost any other modern fighter on the market.
Countries can commit billions to a platform whose lifeline runs through the unpredictable currents of U.S. export politics — or they can wait until Turkey produces a KAAN powered by a domestic engine and supported by a supply chain answerable only to Ankara.
