Türkiye has started work on a sixth-generation fighter jet that will be integrated with artificial intelligence (AI), a top defense official said Friday, in an announcement that comes as the country prepares to send its first homegrown warplane to the sky for the first time in the coming days.

The domestically developed fifth-generation combat aircraft, named Kaan, will perform its inaugural flight "very soon," Haluk Görgün, the head of the Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB), told reporters.

Unveiled publicly last year, Kaan is one of the most important projects in Türkiye’s history. The warplane made a runway debut and successfully completed its first taxi test after starting its engines for the first time in mid-March.

Görgün said they aim to launch mass production of the first block as of 2028 and seek to ensure Kaan is powered by a domestically built engine.

The jet is aimed at replacing the aging F-16 fleet in the inventory of the Air Forces Command, which is planned to be phased out starting in the 2030s. The project was launched in 2016.

Kaan makes Türkiye one of the few countries with the infrastructure and technology to produce a fifth-generation combat aircraft.

Görgün said Türkiye has already launched works on an even more advanced fighter jet.

"Kaan is a fifth-generation aircraft, and we are already working on the sixth-generation version, and we must continue working on it," he noted.

"The fifth-generation aircraft is defined by its invisibility, where all subsystems and sensor fusions are integrated. The sixth generation includes integration with artificial intelligence," Görgün added.

"We had to, have and continue to work on the sixth generation to not miss out on it."

Record exports

The profound transformation in Türkiye's defense industry has been spurred by a score of Western embargoes.

Over the last 20 years, the transformation has aimed at reducing external dependency on Western arms through innovative engineering initiatives and domestically developed technologies.

The drive prompted the development of a range of homegrown air, land and marine platforms, eventually helping lower Türkiye's foreign dependency on defense from around 80% in the early 2000s to some 20% today.

Görgün said imports consist of subsystems and various platforms but stressed the government's determination to ensure self-sufficiency soon.

"We haven't been acquiring platforms for a long time. After a while, we won't be discussing platforms at all," he noted.

The capabilities of Türkiye's defense platform, spearheaded by its combat drones, triggered unprecedented demand that saw its defense exports peak at more than $5.5 billion (TL 165.52 billion) in 2023, up from an earlier record of $4.4 billion in 2022.

More than a third of exports last year were made by Baykar, the developer of the famed Turkish combat drone Bayraktar TB2.

Görgün said they also managed to raise the export price to $65 per kilogram, reaching $10,000 for some products.

In 2023, the defense companies agreed on new contracts worth $10.2 billion, almost twice the size of exports, he said.

Görgün stated that the industry exported 230 different products to 185 countries. More than 3,500 Turkish companies are engaged in the defense sector today.

"2024 will be a year filled with surprises and hopes, containing projects that we will deliver to the security forces and armed forces," Görgün said.