TUSAŞ Hürjet Trainer/LCA's second prototype with important design changes made its maiden flight.
TUSAŞ Honoured the TUSAŞ employees and the taxi driver who lost their lives at the recent terror attack on the Kahramankazan facility with their names written on the prototype.
Hürjet's new prototype flew for 26 minutes at 10000 ft altitude and a speed of 260 knots.
As expected from later iterations of the prototype stage, the design has undergone important changes and additions for the next phases of testing.
Some of the second prototype's features can be listed as a new radome with a bigger area, wingtip hardpoints for air-to-air missiles, and splitter plates at the air intakes.
The new radome has considerably more area than the first prototype, suggesting that this prototype might be the testbed for MURAD AESA radar's Hürjet variant. The frontal section appears to have been revised accordingly as well.
The wingtip hardpoints signal the transition to the weapons testing phase as Hürjet in LCA configuration will carry two Bozdoğan WVRAAMs on its wingtips.
Hürjet will be a successor to the T-38 advanced trainers of the TurAF and NF-5 jets of the Turkish Stars aerobatics team as a non-combatant and fill the gap of a cost-effective combat aircraft in its Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) configuration capable of carrying various air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions.
The LCA configuration will also be an important export asset when second—and third-world countries invest in LCAs when full-size fighter jets are deemed expensive.
