My friend, I've grown older with this programme, I see myself as an overall pessimistic person and have been watching it ever since it hatched but let me tell you this:
People have been doubting them since the very beginning including myself but TAI pulls it off. Does this mean there aren't going to be any delays or hurdles? Of course not. But by now I think we've got to acknowledge them and give them a hats off. Since the beginning of this program, TAI has slowly become an experienced aircraft designer/manufacturer and has become the same size as Dassault; There's also the fact that this is by far the biggest technological investment done in Turkey since like, forever.
TAI has 3 helicopter and 4 aircraft development projects unfinished in their hands right now and none of them have experienced any major hurdles as of yet (and they hopefully never will).
As TAI has built experience and a product catalog, so has the rest of the aviation industry in Turkey. The current tech demonstrator that has flown is AFAICR already some 90 percent indigenous; leaving some valves, the ejection seat and engines foreign (indigenous equivalents of the last two are under development).
Funding won't be a problem since TuAF hasn't commited to any large procurements in 24+ years except the F-35 and we know how that turned out. Economy size-wise Turkey already is the 17th largest economy with a 1.1+ trillion GDP size. Since acc. to some oblivious foreign "Defence Journalists" Turkey 'shockingly' found a budget that wasn't there before for over 120 F-35s, new 40 F-16Vs and now some new built Eurofighters for 5.6 billion USD(source: Bloomberg), I assume this won't be a problem at all.
Never mind the fact that TurAF was originally planning a 1:1 replacement of 400 fighters back in the 00s, the last fighter procurement was back in 2009 for some 30 F-16s and the F-35s haven't arrived; this leaves a huge and critically urgent demand for new and low observable fighter aircraft.
Last but not least; acc. to the 'top boss' (General Manager) of TAI all of the required HUGE investments of infrastructure for the project to succeed and the development of the aircraft itself cost just 1 billion USD until Q1 2024 (and the cost over the program lifetime was estimated to be 10 billion USD). And by that I mean they've really invested enough for TAI to just churn out new aircraft designs for the next century onwards.
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/tai-tf-x-milli-muharip-uçak-mmu-kaan.13448/
I hope I left no questions unanswered.
Cheers
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