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Do Turkish Defence Programmes Run on Time? The Record

Mostly no — and the slippage is concentrated in one place. Turkish defence programmes have a good record on airframes, hulls, munitions and electronics, and a poor one on propulsion. ALTAY was contracted in 2018 for a first delivery inside 18 months and delivered its first serial tanks in October 2025, because the engine and transmission had to be replaced. KAAN was supposed to fly on a Turkish engine in 2028; testing of that engine now starts around 2032. GÖKBEY flew in 2018 and reached the Land Forces in 2026. The pattern is consistent enough that a buyer can plan around it.

That matters more to a foreign procurement office than the headline dates themselves. A delay is only useful information if you know where in the programme it lives, whether it moves the delivery date or only the indigenous-content date, and whether the same thing is likely to happen to your order. On the Turkish record, those three questions have reasonably stable answers.

DEFENCETÜRKIYE DATA BOX

Subject | Schedule performance of Turkish defence programmes

Programmes examined | KAAN, ALTAY, T625 GÖKBEY, HÜRJET, HÜRKUŞ, MUGEM, ATMACA

Dominant failure point | Propulsion — engines, powerpacks and their export licences

Typical mitigation | Deliver on an imported or interim powerplant, retrofit the indigenous one later

Programmes that broadly held schedule | ATMACA (contract October 2018, first deliveries August 2021); HÜRJET flight-test phase

Largest single slip on the public record | KAAN’s indigenous engine, from a 2028 flight target to testing “around 2032”

Status of this page | Open-source editorial analysis, updated as programmes move

What actually slips in a Turkish programme

Group the last decade of Turkish programmes by the subsystem that caused the delay and the distribution is lopsided. Airframes and hulls have generally appeared when promised. GÖKBEY’s first flight came in September 2018, five years after the June 2013 development contract. HÜRJET flew in April 2023. KAAN flew a first prototype in February 2024. The MİLGEM hulls have come out of the sheds on something close to announced intervals. Guided munitions have been better still.

Propulsion is where the schedules break, and for two different reasons that get conflated. The first is engineering: designing and qualifying a turboshaft, a turbofan or a 1,500-horsepower tank diesel is harder and takes longer than almost anything else in a programme, and Turkish industry started that work late. The second is political: the engine is also the subsystem most exposed to another government’s export licence, which means a schedule can be destroyed by a decision taken in Berlin or Washington rather than in Ankara.

ALTAY is the clearest case of the second kind. The serial-production contract with BMC dates from 2018 and envisaged the first tank reaching the Turkish Land Forces within 18 months. German restrictions removed the MTU engine and RENK transmission that the design had assumed, and the programme had to find a replacement. The first 85 tanks are being built with a South Korean engine and transmission, with BMC Power’s indigenous BATU powerpack taking over from roughly 2026-27. First serial deliveries happened in October 2025 — more than five years past the contractual date, and the delay is almost entirely attributable to the powerpack. The hull, turret, armour and fire-control chain were not the problem. Our ALTAY programme timeline tracks the delivery and engine milestones in detail.

KAAN is the clearest case of the first kind, compounded by the second. In 2023 Turkish Aerospace’s then-leadership talked about flying KAAN with a Turkish engine in 2028. In August 2026 the company’s general manager, Mehmet Demiroğlu, put the start of testing for that engine at around 2032. Meanwhile the aircraft itself is late in a smaller way: Aviation Week reported in January 2026 that the first flight of the production-configuration P1 prototype had been pushed towards the summer, and on 2 October 2026 Demiroğlu told an audience at TEKNOFEST in Şanlıurfa that all system checks were complete and P1 should fly “within a few weeks”. Serial deliveries are still being talked about for 2028-29 — on General Electric F110 engines, not Turkish ones.

Announced against actual: seven programmes

Programme	Original public target	What has actually happened	Where it stuck
ALTAY MBT	2018 serial contract: first tank in 18 months	First serial deliveries October 2025; third serial tank shown at SAHA 2026 in May 2026	Powerpack — German licence refused, South Korean interim, BATU to follow
KAAN fighter	2023: fly on a Turkish engine in 2028	Indigenous engine testing “around 2032”; P1 first flight still pending as of October 2026	Engine; interim GE F110 for prototypes and early production
T625 GÖKBEY	Development contract June 2013; first flight September 2018	First delivery to the Land Forces 30 April 2026; 57 on order	Engine — flew on LHTEC CTS800, then on TEI’s TS1400 from April 2023
HÜRKUŞ trainer	Contracted 2006	Entered Turkish Air Force service in 2026, two decades after contract	Certification and configuration changes rather than propulsion
MUGEM carrier	September 2025: “could be completed within one or two years”	Navy figures point to a 2027 launch and delivery around 2032	Scale — a 60,000-tonne hull and its air wing, not a single subsystem
HÜRJET	First flight targeted for the early 2020s	Flew April 2023; first production aircraft flew 30 August 2026; Spanish deliveries from 2028	Broadly held — on an imported GE F404
ATMACA	Serial-production contract 29 October 2018	First missiles delivered to the Turkish Navy in August 2021	Held — roughly three years from contract to delivery

Compiled by DefenceTürkiye from manufacturer statements, contract dates and the reporting listed under Sources. Dates for programmes still in progress are the latest publicly stated figures and will move.

What does not slip, and why that is not a contradiction

Set the capital programmes aside and the picture inverts. ATMACA went from its serial-production contract in October 2018 to first deliveries to the Turkish Navy in August 2021. The Bayraktar TB2 moved from prototype to squadron service quickly enough that it reshaped Baykar’s business. Loitering munitions, guided rockets, electro-optical turrets and radars have generally arrived when announced, and in some cases early.

The reason is not that one set of engineers is better than the other. It is that munitions, UAVs and electronics are iterated in small steps on top of components that already exist and can be bought, while fighters, tanks and carriers require a new powerplant, a new qualification campaign and a new supply chain at the same time. The reputation Turkish industry earned for speed is real, but it was earned in the first category and does not transfer automatically to the second. A buyer evaluating ALTAY on the strength of what TB2 did is reading across a boundary that the Turkish record itself draws quite sharply. HÜRJET is the cleanest illustration of the trade: it kept its schedule, and it kept it on an American engine, as we set out in where HÜRJET fits in the advanced jet trainer market.

Turkish Aerospace HÜRJET advanced jet trainer in red and white livery on static display at TEKNOFEST — HÜRJET on static display at TEKNOFEST. The trainer flew close to its announced date — on an imported General Electric F404. Photo: tolgaozbekcom via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

The mitigation that defines the industry

Faced with a propulsion problem, Turkish programmes have converged on the same answer: deliver the platform on whatever engine can be obtained, and swap in the indigenous one when it qualifies. This two-step is now so consistent that it is effectively doctrine.

The consequence for a buyer is specific and easy to miss. In a Turkish programme, the delivery date and the indigenous-content date are two different commitments with two different risk profiles, and they are routinely announced in the same breath. The delivery date has held reasonably well in recent years once the interim engine was settled. The indigenous-content date has slipped repeatedly. If your requirement is hardware in your own hangar by a given year, the Turkish record is better than its reputation. If your requirement is a platform free of third-country export control, the record is weaker, and you should ask which engine the aircraft or vehicle you are buying will actually leave the factory with.

That second question is not theoretical. The T129 ATAK is the case that proves the cost: Pakistan ordered 30 helicopters, the United States did not authorise export of the LHTEC T800-4A engine, no aircraft were delivered, and the requirement eventually moved to a Chinese platform. The interim-engine strategy keeps domestic programmes moving, but it transfers export-control exposure to the customer. We set out the full picture in are Turkish weapons ITAR-free?, and the engine-by-engine state of play in who builds Türkiye’s aircraft engines.

Why the indigenous engine dates keep moving

Three Turkish turbofans — the TEI TF6000, TF10000 and TF35000 — are meant to end the dependency for KIZILELMA, ANKA-3 and KAAN respectively, and they sit at very different stages of maturity, as we set out in our assessment of the three programmes. The honest reading is that the smallest engine is closest and the largest is furthest away, which is the normal order of difficulty and not a scandal.

The one completed example is instructive. TEI’s TS1400 turboshaft first flew on GÖKBEY in April 2023, according to Turkish Aerospace’s own account, and Janes reported the helicopter delivered to the Turkish Land Forces Command on 30 April 2026 as fitted with the TS1400. That is roughly a decade from programme start to a delivered aircraft on a Turkish engine. It is slow against the original plan, and it is also the proof that the two-step actually completes rather than being an indefinite promise. BATU passing its factory acceptance tests at the end of 2025 points the same way for the land side. TEI’s own trajectory — four decades of making parts for foreign engines before designing its own — explains why the timeline looks the way it does.

Readers who want the Turkish-language programme chronicle rather than the market reading will find Envanter Medya’s detailed account of the T625 GÖKBEY’s route into service useful alongside this page.

How to read a Turkish schedule announcement

Four practical rules follow from the record above, and they are the ones a procurement analyst would actually use.

Separate the platform date from the subsystem date. “Deliveries begin in 2028” and “the Turkish engine enters service in 2028” are not the same sentence, and in recent programmes they have not had the same outcome.
Treat nameplate capacity as a ceiling, not a rate. BMC’s new Ankara plant is designed for up to eight ALTAY a month; the published delivery roadmap for 2026 is 11 tanks. Both numbers are true and they describe different things.
Ask who holds the licence on the engine you are buying. An interim foreign powerplant that is unremarkable for a Turkish customer may be the single binding constraint on your own order.
Weight recent milestones over old announcements. Turkish programmes are announced early and at a political level; the operational dates that hold are the ones restated by the company close to the event.

WHY IT MATTERS

Türkiye is now selling platforms whose schedules a foreign ministry of defence has to underwrite in its own budget cycle. The useful finding is not that Turkish programmes are late — most large defence programmes anywhere are — but that they are late in a predictable, mostly propulsion-shaped way, and that the industry’s standard response protects the delivery date at the cost of carrying a foreign engine into service.

For a buyer, that converts a vague reputational question into two concrete due-diligence items: which powerplant is in the batch you are contracting for, and what happens to your fleet if the country that built it declines to support it.

BUYER VIEW

Delivery risk | Lower than the headlines suggest for in-production systems; higher for anything whose indigenous powerplant is still in qualification.

Contract protection | Ask for configuration to be fixed by batch, not by programme, so an engine change mid-production is a contractual event rather than a surprise.

Export-control exposure | Travels with the interim subsystem. A platform marketed as Turkish may still require a third-country licence this year and not next year.

Retrofit question | If the indigenous engine arrives after your aircraft or vehicles do, who pays for the retrofit, and is it offered at all to export customers?

Support horizon | A fleet split across two powerplants needs two spares chains for its service life. Price it.

Open-source editorial analysis by DefenceTürkiye. Not procurement advice, and not produced for or on behalf of any government.

What this does not say

Three honest limits. First, “on time” is measured here against publicly announced targets, and Turkish programmes are often announced at a political level before a contract exists, which makes the baseline flattering to critics. Second, several of the dates above are for programmes still running and will move again; the MUGEM and TF-2000 schedules in particular are stated differently by different official voices and should be treated as provisional. Third, this page does not attempt to compare Turkish slippage against American, European or Korean slippage on a like-for-like basis — that comparison is worth making, but it needs a consistent dataset that does not yet exist in open sources. The claim here is narrower: the Turkish pattern is internally consistent and legible, which is what a buyer needs. For the broader independence question, see is Türkiye fully independent in defence production?

FAQ

Are Turkish defence programmes usually delayed?

The large platform programmes usually are, by years rather than months, and almost always because of propulsion. Munitions, UAVs and electronics programmes have a much better record and frequently arrive on or near their announced dates.

Why is the ALTAY tank so late?

The 2018 serial-production contract called for a first delivery within 18 months. German export restrictions removed the engine and transmission the design assumed, and the programme had to be re-engineered around a South Korean powerpack while BMC Power developed the indigenous BATU. First serial deliveries took place in October 2025.

Will KAAN fly with a Turkish engine?

Not for a long time. Turkish Aerospace has said testing of the indigenous TF35000 begins around 2032. Prototypes and the early production aircraft are planned around the General Electric F110, and first deliveries are being discussed for 2028-29 on that basis. Our KAAN programme page tracks the current status.

Has any Turkish programme actually completed the engine substitution?

Yes. TEI’s TS1400 turboshaft first flew on the T625 GÖKBEY in April 2023, and Janes reported the April 2026 delivery to the Turkish Land Forces as TS1400-powered. On the land side, the BATU powerpack passed factory acceptance testing at the end of 2025.

Does a Turkish delay affect export customers differently?

It can. Domestic customers can accept an interim foreign engine without much consequence. An export customer inherits whatever licence that engine carries — the undelivered Pakistani T129 order is the clearest example of how that can end.

Is the MUGEM aircraft carrier delayed?

The dates have moved substantially. In September 2025 President Erdoğan spoke of construction being completed within one or two years; naval figures since then point to a launch in 2027 and delivery around 2032. See our MUGEM page for the programme and its intended air wing.

Which Turkish programme slipped the most?

Measured against its own public target, KAAN’s indigenous engine: from a 2028 flight target set in 2023 to a start of testing “around 2032”. HÜRKUŞ holds the record for elapsed time, taking two decades from its 2006 contract to Turkish Air Force service in 2026.