According to a press release published by Turkish Aerospace on June 18, the firm is building Turkey's biggest and Europe's second-largest subsonic wind tunnel facility. The facility is underway for the purpose of carrying out wind tunnel tests of Turkish Fighter. The wind tunnel is intended to be used in the development of indigenous, rotary-wing and fixed-wing aircraft, especially the Turkish Fighter.

Follow Air Recognition on Google News at this link

TFX 5th Gen Turkish Fighter (Picture source: TAI)

The tunnel will have three different test sections, large, small and open. The test specimens will be positioned in these sections and will be equipped with state of the art technology measurement and sensing devices for advanced testing.

With the integrated moving ground belt system, landing and take-off tests for aircraft will be carried out only in this tunnel in Turkey. In addition to these test capabilities, the production, integration and instrumentation of the models to be tested will also be carried out in this facility and significant contributions will be made to the product development process.

TF-X aircraft will be a multi-role aircraft, it will be designed mainly for an air-to-air role with consideration to air-to-surface roles as well. Upon engineering analysis, preliminary calculations, based on received information of suppliers of candidate engines, TF-X aircraft is decided to be a twin-engine configuration.

Turkish Fighter-TF, the 5+ Generation Multirole Fighter Aircraft, provides significant capabilities in both Air to Surface and Air to Air combat requirements. Turkish Aerospace’s survivable, strong and agile platform Turkish Fighter is a fully aware warrior, with intelligent and strong combat capabilities.

The TF-X 2023, 21 meters in length, 14 meters in width and 6 meters in height can reach the speed of 1,8 Mach. The first flight is planned to be made in 2023 and the prototype of the aircraft is planned to be completed within these periods.