Why Ukraine's Ambitions to Buy Fifth-Gen Jet Which Doesn’t Exist Yet Will Crash and Burn

Western military observers monitoring the Ukrainian crisis are holding their breath in bated anticipation ahead of the arrival of the F-16 fighter jets long promised to Kiev, which Russia has vowed to shoot out of the skies as soon as they’re deployed. But some Ukrainian officials are already setting their sights on far more ambitious goals.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Ankara has announced Kiev’s plans to purchase Turkiye’s new Kaan stealth multirole/air superiority fighter once the advanced prospective fifth-generation enters production.

“We will not only buy it, we will also use it. We also know where to use it,” Ambassador Vasyl Bodnar told CNN Turk in an interview this week in which he praised the Turkish military equipment already delivered to Ukraine.

Bodnar claimed that Ukrainian defense companies are working on the Kaan’s engines and “working and competing for the Kaan project,” and stressed that the promising new plane has the “full potential to compete with the F-35 and the F-22."

“If we manage to make this a success story and prevent the influence of third parties in both East and West, we will be one of the strongest in the region,” the ambassador assured.

What is the Kaan?

Development work on Turkiye’s ambitious national fifth-generation aircraft officially commenced in late 2010, with the project led by the Turkish Aerospace Industries and TUSAS Engine Industries (a manufacturer of licensed General Electric-designed engines). Turkiye received development and engineering assistance from the UK’s BAE Systems on the project, and tapped Eurofighter Typhoon engine maker Eurojet and Rolls Royce for assistance on the plane’s power plants.

The Kaan program was formally unveiled to the press in 2021, with design and qualifications expected to be completed by 2029, a critical design review carried out as soon as later this year, and the first flight made by 2026. Mass production is expected to start in 2029, coinciding with the retirement of Turkiye’s fleet of F-16 fighters in the 2030s.

TAI TF-X Taxi Trials at Ankara TAI Base, 17 March 2023.

© Photo : Dimir

Preliminary specifications include a one or two seater configuration, twin engines, advanced stealth characteristics, cutting-edge avionics and radar, all designed to allow Turkiye to join the handful of nations with fifth-generation fighter jet manufacturing capabilities. The Kaan is expected to be armed with an array of Turkish-made air-to-air, air-to-surface missiles, bombs, and radar/electronic warfare suite.

Ukrainian Officials’ Heads in the Clouds

For now, the Kaan “has only taxied along the runway and been shown off externally,” Major Andrei Krasnoperov, a Russian Aerospace Forces veteran and military expert, told Sputnik, pointing to the amount of time and resources necessary to put a true fifth-generation fighter aircraft into service.

Pointing to Russia’s experiences developing the Sukhoi Su-57 jet, Krasnoperov intimated that Kiev’s expectations on purchasing the aircraft from Turkiye in the foreseeable future are absolutely unrealistic.

“A fifth-generation aircraft requires a long testing period. It must meet all the standards of a fifth-generation aircraft,” the observer stressed, pointing to characteristics like stealth (i.e. the absorption of radio waves) and speed. “The declared speed of the Turkish jet is about 1,800 km/hour. But that’s what’s planned….But in reality it’s not that simple,” Krasnoperov said, pointing to the difficulties aircraft designers often face when developing new jets, and the kinds of compromises that need to be made to create an operational aircraft, particularly one so complex.

“A fifth-generation aircraft must meet all the requirements in terms of speed, avionics, and all sorts of aviation equipment, plus stealth. But for now the plane has only been seen taxiing along the runway. That’s all there is to say about it,” the Russian major and first-class instructor pilot said. “To prove that a plane is a plane it is at least necessary for it to take off. If it hasn’t, and these delays indicate that it is still raw.”

Retired Russian Army Colonel and military analyst Viktor Litovkin agrees, saying that it’s hard to speak of the Kaan’s final form at this stage, and that talking about the system’s characteristics and prospects will be possible only once the plane is airborne.

Building a plane is a long and “very serious process,” Litovkin told Sputnik.

“Before an aircraft takes off, a huge amount of testing is carried out on the ground. And only then, when all ground testing activities are completed, is the first attempt to lift the plane into the air organized. Then it ascends into the air and immediately lands, or circles over the airfield,” the expert noted.

“When someone announces that they will do something by a certain date, this is not always justified. It’s just that journalists and the public want this all to happen as quickly as possible. But in reality, the laws of physics do not adjust to social expectations,” Litovkin stressed, echoing Krasnoperov in pointing out that even major military aerospace power like Russia has required years to get its Su-57 into production.

“We have the Su-57, which made its first flight back in 2010. But we still have only about ten-fifteen of these aircraft in service, because we’re still mastering this aircraft, looking for its advantages and shortcomings, what needs to be improved, what needs to be refined. It had one engine type. Now a second-order engine is being created for it; it also needs to be adapted and found out how it interacts with the aircraft, and so on. This is a very serious process, and not just ‘one, two, let’s fly.’ It doesn’t happen that way,” the observer summed up.

The problem for Kiev, as former Swedish Armed Forces officer Mikael Valterron told Sputnik on Friday while discussing long-term security pacts with NATO countries, is that Ukraine urgently needs defense equipment for the Western bloc’s proxy war against Russia now, not ten years down the line.

“It’s…an easy way out for NATO countries. They’ve already promised that they will do a lot for Ukraine in the coming ten years but what’s important for Ukraine is what happens over the next year,” Valterron said.

Will Turkiye Agree to Sell the Planes to Kiev?

Then there are questions of financing. Where would Kiev get financing to purchase fifth-gen fighters from Turkiye without being propped up by NATO? Would Turkiye agree to sell the aircraft to Ukraine before equipping their own Air Force first? At present, Ankara plans to deliver the first 10 Block-1 Kaan jets to the Air Force between 2030 and 2033, with mass production of additional planes planned for 2034-2040. Ambassador Bodnar’s comments on plans to buy the new fifth-gen jets are highly ambitious, unless Kiev envisions the present proxy war becoming a NATO Hundred Years’ War against Russia.