Kubilay Yıldırım on the mystery engine:
Let two of the hardest engineering challenges on Earth — an ICBM-class ballistic system and a 40K+ lb thrust fighter jet engine — supposedly appear out of nowhere overnight. As if a group of nameless geniuses, chosen by white-haired elders, taken from their families as infants and raised for 23 years in a dark underground chamber on raw meat, somehow built them in a secret workshop beneath Tuzla.
And let’s even say they did it for free.
At the very moment Türkiye was most cornered, they emerged like saviors. Beneath the surface, in some hidden mega-factory, the serial production lines were already waiting.
Short. Painless. Effortless.
Meanwhile, Türkiye actually has the TF35000 project. Years ago, the man leading the vision behind it openly explained the process:
“We had previously designed the TS1400 with an axial compressor. But in order to truly learn how to design and test axial compressors, we independently developed the TJ300 engine. We ran it. To even understand the airflow and make such a design possible, we had to create a large number of specialized design tools ourselves. Maybe the product could eventually be used on a platform, but for us it was fundamentally a learning project.
Then came the TF6000. We started it partly because we foresaw a need in the market for a modern engine in that thrust class, but also because we needed to learn how to design a fully axial, blisk-compressor turbofan with a fan stage. Again, we had to develop many new design tools. We had to build our own testing infrastructure. We learned how to create a large fully axial engine.
After that came the TF10000. Through that process, we would also learn, test, and validate afterburner systems and variable convergent-divergent nozzle designs.
Most importantly, we are developing the FADEC systems for all of these engines ourselves — both the software and the hardware.
Another issue just as important is materials technology. With every engine project, we expand our materials repertoire. We even had to develop and produce some relatively simple alloys ourselves. At the same time, we are experimenting with and developing special crystal-structured materials.
Because of all this, we are not entering the TF35000 project blindly. We did not stand idle for years. We identified TF35000 — the Ferrari of this field, our Kızılelma — as the strategic objective, and step by step we expanded our capability set, knowledge base, and experience in order to reach it.”
Today, at the TEI stand, I happened to meet one of the systems engineers working on TF35000. Even in a casual standing conversation, I could get a rough sense of certain design budgets of the engine. We were talking at the level of: “We have even already determined the electrical power consumption of the FADEC.”
Two engineers — one former turbomachinery engineer, one current — having a perfectly natural technical conversation.
That is precisely why I have no doubt the project exists.
Complex engineering projects grow like human beings. As they grow, they begin speaking to you differently. They develop friends, history, scars. They fall down, scrape their knees, play ball, wear out their shoes. And you witness all of it.
That is why one of these two projects is real, and the other is not.
Türkiye’s TF35000 project is real. The people leading it are genuinely capable of achieving it. But it has a timeline and a process. And all of us will witness that process together. As we do, we will understand more and more how difficult and demanding such a project truly is.
We are targeting around 35,000 lb of thrust from an engine roughly in the size class of the F110. And we will achieve it. Maybe even slightly more. Perhaps, years later, as our knowledge and experience continue to grow, we may even reach 40K+ lb if required.
But we will see it happen.
And when we do, we will look back and say:
“Man… that other story was complete nonsense.”
Only then will we truly understand what a real engineering effort looks like.
Of course, some people of rotten character will still invent new fantasies for themselves. There is nothing to be done about that. Just as we live in a world alongside thieves, dishonorable people, and the immoral, we will also have to tolerate those who thrive on empty fabrication.
That is simply how it will be.