F-16's record is primarily boosted by 2 conditions:
1- its usage against inexperienced, small and unstable countries' air forces; that too in swarms of multinational military coalitions;
2- Israel's record against ceremonious states with little air combat experience compared to their own force.
F-16s took a solid beating against German and Swedish pilots in multinational exercises where the skills of both were equal or exceeded that of USAF. I don't know the training capabilities of Turkey, but surely they are pretty strong in terms of aerial combat given their solid focus on military training standards.
TF-X will most likely be better than the Block 70 F-16 overall, except for the AN/APG-83 radars which are borrowed from F-35.
Actually Turkey successfully produces Gan based AESA radar which is the latest in the world.. They started to put them in UAVs with 1.5 ton payload capability called AKinci and on Hurjet, You can see that Hurjet has long nose, compare to other train jets, which shows that it was designed to fight as Turkey can install its own technology on it to test, as its very hard to get approval from the US..
As i said, before you needed bigger aircraft for bigger radar to see longer and maneuver to run away from BVR, but with latest network enabled BVR missiles with AWACS, its very hard, and also with Ramjet engine like meteor and other countries also work on it such as Turkey, maneuver will not really save them anymore..
Advantage of network enabled BVR is, before you used to fire BVR missiles, thinking that after 90 km, when your BVR missile arrive there, it will open its small active missile seeker and hopefully the aircraft will be there to shoot it down...
If jets were using their own radar to illuminate, they will show their location and most probably be hit too so it was very danger, but not illuminating it, will also result in less kill ratio as experience and countries with AWACS will help the target aircraft to move away...
But, with the new network enabled warfare, the jet fire the missile and leave the location. leave it to Awacs aircraft from far away to take the missile to the aircraft. So, those maneuver will not save you as much as before with little advantage.. just imagine it now with March 5 speed ramjet engines coming to you with almost 1800meter second speed.
You don't actually think that, do you!
You're probably referring to the combat radius of F16. 2600 km will be the (optimistic) ferry range of Hürjet.
Altitude, ability for evasive manoeuvres, presence of other assets including fighters are some factors to consider. A high performing aircraft like F16 flying at a higher altitude will bleed off the energy of BVR missiles from a light attack aircraft much easier. It's quite suicidal.
The only advantage Hürjet has is that it'll engage serious foes only within the border or just outside, thus being assisted by ground assets. This is also its disadvantage.
All of this is assuming that it'll detect a newer F16 beforehand anyway. Even that's unlikely. Wait for the numbers. This is very premature.
Do you understand that being able to fly little bit higher doesnt really give you advantage that much but it actually make you being seen from far away with IRST because the difference of fighter jets aircraft skin and outside temperature is higher there..
It is obvious that Hurjet is more defensive aircraft.. You cannot fly too away to fire missiles and come back.. countries with big areas such as Saudis, Russia, Chine, USA, Canada, it will not work.. but, those small countries, would love to have it..
Waiting for that last reason, if no one else guesses I'm hoping you'll tell us. I'd also like to hear why you think the hurjet has a chance against an f16; you've mentioned RCS, which as yet is presumed and can't be confirmed, so what other reasons are there? Like hypothetical question: If you were building an air force right now from scratch, which would you rather have 4 squadrons of, later block f16s or hurjets?
