Ankara has issued a military certification for the Turkish Aerospace Industries Hürkuş-II jet trainer, marking the first time the country has independently cleared a domestically-built aircraft using entirely national resources.
A joint panel of 90 experts cleared 1,790 technical requirements, reviewed 950 documentation packages, and completed 153 tests for the platform.
The effort also involved 38 laboratory, 71 ground, and 44 flight evaluations across 12 engineering disciplines.
The NATO country said that the end-to-end process establishes an indigenous testing framework for future local defense initiatives, including the Kaan fifth-generation fighter jet program.
“September 9, 2026, is a strategic as well as a technical milestone for our Turkish aviation industry…a concrete demonstration of Türkiye’s capability to design, manufacture, test, verify, and certify its own aircraft,” Secretariat of Defense Industries President Haluk Görgün stated.
“We are not only developing air platforms, but also building the technical authority, methodology, and certification culture to verify the reliability of these platforms with our own people. On the wings of HÜRKUŞ-II lies the will of a Türkiye that trusts in its own design, its own testing, and its own technical competence.”
The TAI Hürkuş-II
The Hürkuş-II features updated avionics, a modernized airframe architecture, a new wide-angle heads-up display, and an advanced communications suite to meet evolving preparatory pilot training requirements.
The platform’s curriculum is set to be tied to the Turkish Air Force’s advanced fighter plane trainer Hürjet.
Hürkuş-II has a length and a wingspan of 11 meters (36 feet), seats for two people, and a payload capacity of 7,500 pounds (3,402 kilograms)
It is fitted with a 1,600-horsepower Pratt & Whitney PT6A-68T engine for speeds of 288 knots (533 kilometers/331 miles per hour), a service ceiling of over 11,900 meters (39,041 feet), and a range of 1,190 kilometers (739 miles).
