From Building Someone Else’s F-16 to Flying KAAN: The 50-Year Rise of Turkish Aerospace
What does it take to move from manufacturing another company’s aircraft to designing your own? Not one prototype, but decades of engineers, factories, test programs and suppliers. Turkish Aerospace, known in Türkiye as TUSAŞ, is a rare example of that journey in progress. Our new documentary connects the F-16 production line of the 1980s with the KAAN fighter flying today.
Key facts
- Roots date to 28 June 1973, with the aim of building Turkish aerospace capability
- A Turkish-American joint venture for F-16 production was set up in 1984
- In 2005 the foreign shares were acquired and the business became Turkish Aerospace Industries
- HÜRJET first flew in 2023; KAAN made its first flight on 21 February 2024
- In August 2025 the company announced an agreement linked to 48 KAAN aircraft for Indonesia
The F-16 learning curve
Licensed production taught engineers and technicians how to turn drawings into consistent aircraft, manage quality records and fix problems through controlled processes. Those skills are essential for any original design. The documentary makes a useful point: industrial independence is a matter of degree, not a yes-or-no label.
KAAN: what a first flight does and doesn’t prove
KAAN’s first flight in February 2024, followed by a second in May, moved the program into flight testing. It did not create an operational fleet. A modern fighter must bring together structures, propulsion, flight controls, sensors and software, and every change in one area affects the others. The same caution applies to the Indonesian agreement: an agreement for 48 aircraft is not 48 aircraft delivered.
Trainers, drones and helicopters
HÜRKUŞ and HÜRJET build the pilot pipeline and the company’s design experience. The ANKA family and AKSUNGUR cover different unmanned missions, and ANKA should not be confused with aircraft built by Baykar, a separate company. The T129 ATAK grew from an international partnership with the A129 design, while the T625 GÖKBEY is a separate utility helicopter program.
The real measure of progress
Success is not the number of projects announced. It is whether designs complete testing, production becomes repeatable, customers accept deliveries and operators receive dependable support for years.
Watch the full series
This article accompanies our documentary on YouTube. The complete Defense Company Documentaries series follows eight of the best-known defense and aerospace companies, from Lockheed Martin and RTX to ASELSAN and HAVELSAN. Subscribe to DefenseandTech on YouTube so you don’t miss the next episode.
Editorial reference date: 2 November 2026. Figures come from company reports published by that date.
