There is no production line left to move in Ukraine, the Russians bombed the factory.
To my knowledge they delivered even after an airstrike in 2022, according to the ambassador they were delayed wit other priorities, but were still able to deliver prototypes 4 months later. The Ukrainians have the factory production deep underground(from soviet times, they expected a mass war with the west and expected production facilities to be targeted).
This interview is from a month ago, and the ambassador was saying everything was fine and Ukraine is meeting its delivery obligations. So unless there was an airstrike in Zaporizhzhia recently that completely crippled Ukraine that I didn't hear about, I don't think production has stopped. Besides Russia hasn't really bombed Zaporizhzhia all that much, idk whether its b/c of air defense there being strong or whatever. Its still risky, but the world is full of risks, you just have to take calculated ones.
Even if everything goes well, we are producing with the GE tradition. Ukraine produces with the Soviet tradition.
Whats that even mean? lol any examples? Clearly TAI(the ones who license produce GE engines) guys don't agree if they are holding talks with Ukraine over collaboration. They seem to be impressed with Ukraine enough to consider codevelopment.
However, TEI has reached its limits as a human resource. TEI cannot start a new engine project until the turbofan projects (TF 10000 and TF 35000) on the "immediately required" list are finished.
Fair point, maybe this is true, but I guess only TEI guys know for sure, I have heard rumors of a domestic engine, and to be honest its just as important as the TF6000/TF1000 if not more, as to my knowledge far more transport helicopters(both civilian and military market) are to be produced than anka 3s and kizilelmas, so I'll give you this point, maybe its true. Although the TEI1400 is set for mass production in 2024 so that means its development is finished, we don't know how the turboshaft team will be reassigned. Will they work on the turbofan projects, or maybe they will be given this turboshaft project.
TEI cannot even retain its current experts. Westerners and Arabs alike offer these experts ridiculously high salaries.
Maybe, but the guys working on this sort of stuff aren't making pennies to begin with, so you can competitively compensate them, heck there were BAE guys working on the TFX, so if anything people were being poached in the other direction. I don't really see many people leaving as the top top projects are restricted so Pratt and Whitney/GE/Rollsroyce/Safron don't tend to hire foreign nationals to work on sensitive projects, so they will be stuck at lower roles in those companies, whereas they will have far more opportunity at upward mobility at TEI which is developing new projects and research. Not to mention Turkey is really benefitting from the Russian/ukrainian brain drain that is happening with the war, many Ukrainian engineers are in Turkey right now, maybe thats why the Ambassador was talking about codevelopment, he mentioned helicopter engine codevelopemnt via a joint company and I can't think of any other aircraft other than the ATAK2 and the T925 that Turkey needs an engine for.
The Arabs states maybe could lure some people with money, but those places don't have any significant engine programs so I guess we will see. If anything I wouldn't be surprised if Turkey adopts the South Korean way where they are going to the UAE, asking them to invest and codevelop(recently a transport airplane was announced), with the UAE covering the bill, and Korea providing the technical staff and at the end both sharing the product. There was a recent agreement signed with the UAE and Turkey on defense cooperation, so maybe this is more possible.
The fear that the AKP government will impose an Islamic lifestyle also drives these experts out of the country.
Cmon, even you don't believe this nonsense. lol, how are you going to say they will go to arab states for work and then also say they will leave Turkey b/c of "islamic lifestyle", its just silly fear mongering.
I feel like you are far too pessimistic, you were acting like TAI didn't even know what it was doing with the Hurjet saying the engine hasn't even arrived, how are they going to do testflight, and in the end the aircraft flew just fine, the engine had arrived a while back.
www.meteksan.com
Even if everything goes well, we are producing with the GE tradition. Ukraine produces with the Soviet tradition. This in itself is a big problem. If there were no policy restrictions, the most reasonable solution would be the GE T700/CT7 engines to be produced in Turkey under GE license.
