Professor İsmail Demir, President of Defence Industries, has presented the TF-X Engine road map for the future. The first TF-X prototypes will fly using F-16 engines (F110-GE-129) acquired from the United States. Demir added that they had determined an alternate functioning approach for the engine and that three solutions would be on the table concurrently.
Demir indicated on CNNTurk"s live broadcast that F-16 engines would be employed in the initial stage, and their performance would be inferior to that of the fifth generation. "We are attempting to offer engines from a different engine source," Demir explained. I"m not going to inform you about the country. On the one hand, our domestic design work continues. On the other side, there is the long-standing collaboration model offered by Rolls-Royce. We were concerned about this. We conducted discussions to resolve such apprehensions. We will continue to collaborate with them to develop indigenous engines. Because this engine is not accessible in the United Kingdom, we want to design and manufacture it in Turkey. We were not in a good situation in the discussions in the past, but we have finally reached an agreement point. There was no model on the table that we were happy with. We came to a decent spot through negotiating."
TUSAŞ Engine Industries (TEI) is also the manufacturer of General Electric F110 engines under license.TFX Engine"s third county options are; IHI Corporation XF9 (Japan),Xi"an Aero-Engine Corporation WS-10/WS-15 (China) and UEC Saturn AL-31 (Russia). Pratt & Whitney has F119 engines used at F-22 aircraft, but due to CAATSA, it is unlikely for Turkey to receive such engines from the U.S.
TRMotor and Turkish Aerospace (TUSAŞ) cooperate on the indigenous engine in Turkey. So far, TRMotor has declared that it has begun development on an aeroplane Auxiliary Power Unit (APU).The third alternative is based on Rolls Royce, a British corporation. The company"s solution was developed in collaboration with its Turkish Partner Kale Group and Pratt & Whitney joint venture. Osman Okyay, President of the Kale Group Technical Division, said in January 2021 that the company had filed an offer for engine manufacture with Rolls-Royce.
