KAAN Programme

Current status

KAAN is Türkiye’s national next-generation combat-aircraft development programme. The Secretariat of Defence Industries states that the programme is intended to design and produce a new-generation combat aircraft for Turkish Air Force requirements, with high manoeuvrability, low-observability characteristics, modern mission and sensor systems, maximum domestic-industry participation and technology localisation.

Turkish Aerospace lists KAAN among its principal aircraft programmes and remains the central industrial platform for the aircraft’s development.

Why it matters

KAAN is more than a single aircraft programme. It acts as an integration point for Türkiye’s combat-aircraft engineering, mission systems, sensors, manufacturing, software, propulsion ambitions and advanced aerospace supply chain.

For that reason we track it across four dimensions rather than as one story: aircraft development and flight test, propulsion and subsystem localisation, serial production and procurement, and export and international industrial participation.

What we track

Flight test and development

We maintain a milestone timeline from official SSB and Turkish Aerospace updates rather than republishing static specifications copied from secondary sources.

Propulsion

Engine development and localisation decisions materially affect programme sovereignty, production planning and export flexibility, so propulsion milestones are tracked as a dedicated sub-topic rather than folded into airframe news.

Procurement and production

Procurement quantities, production batches and delivery targets are added to this hub only when an authoritative current source confirms them.

Export

Export developments are separated into expression of interest, government-level agreement, signed contract, industrial implementation and delivery — so that an early-stage political announcement is never presented as completed procurement.

Primary sources

• SSB — Milli Muharip Uçak Geliştirilmesi (KAAN)
• Turkish Aerospace (TUSAŞ)

The factual fields on this page are refreshed from primary sources, not from our own archive: past coverage provides context, but it is not the source of truth for current programme status. How we source and verify is set out in our Sourcing Policy.