Scheduling of fighter aircraft development projects

In fighter aircraft development projects, where development activities take a long time, the accuracy of the calendar predictions made at the beginning of the project is very important in order to complete the project within the targeted time and the activities to be carried out within the project to progress in a way that supports the activities that follow it. Especially if such a large-scale project is carried out for the first time, defining the activity durations in the most realistic way and defining the precedence relations of the activities are important for the success of the project. In this study, defining the predecessor relations among the activities within the fifth-generation fighter jet development project, which was carried out for the first time in our country, was considered to be the first step. Along with the definition of precedence relations, optimistic, pessimistic and most likely durations were defined by considering situations such as delays of the activities to be carried out due to unforeseen reasons or ending much earlier than expected. The expected duration of the project activities was calculated by the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). With the mathematical model based on linear programming, critical activities were determined and the time for the project to be realized was obtained. By comparing this time with the first flight and project realization times of other fifth generation fighter jet projects succeeded in other countries in the past, an inference was made about how compatible the predictions were. In addition, the project realization probabilities have been calculated for different duration in case the stakeholder's date of need bring forward.