Turkish Military Aviation : News & Discussions

@randomradio Turkish defence industry is really weird.


Funding of this project only started in 2020 and within 3 yrs they are going to fly 11tn helicopter with no prior experience.
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How they are able to develop weapons in such a short a period of time and who is funding them for such large no of projects.
They have had access to lot of readily available technologies and partnerships. Just like South Koreans. But now a falling out has happened and economy is taking a hit.

Law of averages will apply.
 
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@randomradio Turkish defence industry is really weird.


Funding of this project only started in 2020 and within 3 yrs they are going to fly 11tn helicopter with no prior experience.
View attachment 22687


How they are able to develop weapons in such a short a period of time and who is funding them for such large no of projects.

Apart from access to Western tech, they have a short history of developing helicopters.


It's unclear how much help they are receiving from Italy though. Leonardo is deeply involved in Turkey's aerospace industry. They are the ones who developed Turkey's T129. They are receiving tech from other European companies too.
 
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Apart from access to Western tech, they have a short history of developing helicopters.


It's unclear how much help they are receiving from Italy though. Leonardo is deeply involved in Turkey's aerospace industry. They are the ones who developed Turkey's T129. They are receiving tech from other European companies too.
Why these European countries are so generous when they know turks will eat up their market by using their technology.

And where all the money is coming from?
 
Why these European countries are so generous when they know turks will eat up their market by using their technology.

'Cause the ones who lost competitions still wanna sell their stuff. Or in other cases, in order to get market access, the customer may ask for some extra things, like how we are expecting assistance in AMCA in exchange for the MRFA contract.

And where all the money is coming from?

The Turks have money. It's an advanced, industrialised country with a sufficiently high per capita income.
 
'Cause the ones who lost competitions still wanna sell their stuff. Or in other cases, in order to get market access, the customer may ask for some extra things, like how we are expecting assistance in AMCA in exchange for the MRFA contract.



The Turks have money. It's an advanced, industrialised country with a sufficiently high per capita income.
I think that turks hide most of the information regarding collaboration. Seems like they keep inside info of their defense sector under tight leash.

@hellbent once told that they hire many foreign scientists as well as offer tax free heaven for defence companies .

But still the no. Of programs that they are running is quite too large considering their GDP. Even high GDP countries can barely afford them .
 
I think that turks hide most of the information regarding collaboration. Seems like they keep inside info of their defense sector under tight leash.

@hellbent once told that they hire many foreign scientists as well as offer tax free heaven for defence companies .

But still the no. Of programs that they are running is quite too large considering their GDP. Even high GDP countries can barely afford them .
Few reasons which comes top of the mind apart from what hellbent reports is Turkey wants to cut dependency on US products thanks to sanctions imposed by the latter but also wants to avoid getting into such a trap w.r.t any other supplier be it traditional Western European sources or Russian or even Chinese by becoming self reliant .

What better way than to focus on defence as an industry , back it up & compensate for costs expended vide R&D for internal consumption thru exports , the way it's traditionally done all over the world. That should answer the question of internal finances when the Turkish economy & it's currency is in a bad shape.

Which in turn brings us to why exactly would European Copter manufacturers be assisting Turkey . A few ideas come to my mind - all speculative obviously & with a lot of extrapolation .

Coming from the HVAC sector , I've noticed European OEMs focus purely on vital sub systems w/o which no air conditioning unit can function instead of being a system integrator , focussing on assembling a product building a brand around it then focusing of sales across the world , marketing strategies , after sales support, spares , service level agreements , etc .
.

The idea being if you have a vital sub system like a compressor in your product portfolio & it's the best performing one in it's class , you can sell it to multiple brands without being tied to one brand exclusively.

Because competition in the manufacture of such a vital sub system is usually a duopoly or at best you may have 3 such players ( not considering the Chinese here who're more of interlopers & have started making their presence felt internationally only in the past 8-10 yrs ) extrapolating this idea , you are in a position to pick & choose the system integrators you work with & can command a premium besides dictating your terms in so far as the aerospace market goes .

The other possibilities are given the pre dominance of unmanned drones & the fact that heptrs suffer a very high attrition rate , it's quite possible given the advances made in R&D in communication , AI , machine learning , the works etc , forthcoming versions coming towards the end of the decade would feature both manned & unmanned versions followed exclusively by unmanned versions next decade onwards.

Hence by assisting Turkey , they're not exactly vacating this market which Turkey would be free to prospect - the benefits of which would automatically accrue to these European companies were Turkey to win a contract , while focussing on advanced technologies which would be beyond the scope of Turkey today & possibly this decade thus not proving a threat to Europeans at least for this decade.

Beyond all this there could also be the consideration of financial health of these companies which they'd have to consider. After all if a premier company like Rolls Royce is in the doldrums financially speaking who knows what kinds of financial troubles are bedeviling these European companies ?

What're your views ? @Picdelamirand-oil ; @Milspec ?
 
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I think that turks hide most of the information regarding collaboration. Seems like they keep inside info of their defense sector under tight leash.

@hellbent once told that they hire many foreign scientists as well as offer tax free heaven for defence companies .

But still the no. Of programs that they are running is quite too large considering their GDP. Even high GDP countries can barely afford them .
They seem expensive at first glance but most Turkish programs are assembly projects and they do it in a very planned manner. The T129 Atak is basically the a129 mangusta with some Turkish electronics and weapons suite. They have focussed on small and medium munitions unlike us where we have focussed on far bigger projects with very limited amount of assistance in most cases. The Altay is the k2 panther from Korea with some Turkish electronics and German AMAP armour. The Bayraktar was just a turkish design entirely mad ewith western electronics. Their real high end programs have been slow like the hurjet and Altay MBT which is still in testing. It would be easy for our projects if we just started using western Europeans and american subcomponents for our projects like the arjun or tejas.
They do have an impressive automobile industry. A lot of their projects are very low tech and easily achievable for the indian industry. Sadly we don't have the vision or the pragmatism of turkish defence industry. Even the Chinese invited Russian and Ex-Soviet bloc scientists to make their missile tech as well as their help in armour and helos
 
I think that turks hide most of the information regarding collaboration. Seems like they keep inside info of their defense sector under tight leash.

@hellbent once told that they hire many foreign scientists as well as offer tax free heaven for defence companies .

But still the no. Of programs that they are running is quite too large considering their GDP. Even high GDP countries can barely afford them .

With the exception of high end fixed wing aircraft and nuclear propulsion, everything to do with the military is affordable, it just depends on the spending priority. Most of the advanced economies have the money to indigenise 90% of equipment they use, different story whether they have the scientific manpower to do it, but they definitely have the money for it. Most don't do it because they don't have the production scale that will make it viable. Turkey has the scale too.

So any country that can afford its own fighter jet program can afford everything else necessary.
 
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Akinci reaches over 45,000ft fitted with P&W PT6A-135A engines 1,500HP (2 x 750HP), flight lasted 20 hours and 23 minutes
 
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Turkey's purchase of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets becomes clearer
BY LAURENT LAGNEAU - JUNE 24, 2022


Sketched out a few weeks ago, the hypothesis of a purchase of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets by Ankara seems to be becoming clearer. As a reminder, excluded from the F-35 program, for which it had ordered 100 aircraft, Turkey would like to acquire 40 F-16 Vipers and upgrade 80 of its older generation F-16C/Ds to this standard. However, it is not certain that it will be satisfied, even if the Biden administration is a priori in favour. Indeed, for such a sale to take place, it is necessary to have the agreement of Congress...

However, Congress is not in the best of dispositions towards Turkey, due to its purchase of Russian S-400 air defence systems, the tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean and its role in Libya and Syria.


In order to avoid the downgrading of its combat aircraft, like that experienced by Iran after its break with the United States in 1979, Turkey has turned to Russia. To the point that a purchase of Su-35 "Flanker-E" and Su-57 "Felon" aircraft was mentioned for a time. However, last March, a Turkish official mentioned the hypothesis of a Eurofighter Typhoon purchase to Defense News. And this while BAE Systems is involved in the Turkish TF-X fighter project... as well as Rolls Royce, recently asked by Ankara to co-produce the engines for this future aircraft.

Last month, the chief of staff of the Turkish air force, General Hasan Küçükakyüz, visited the United Kingdom to meet with General Sir Mike Wingston, the head of the Royal Air Force. And on this occasion, he was able to examine the Eurofighter Typhoons of the British "Quick Reaction Alert" [QRA].

"The Typhoons are very good, of excellent quality," a "source familiar with the Turkish government's internal deliberations" told the Middle East Eye website. And this one added: "This could be a provisional option until we get the fifth-generation TF-X and if, obviously, we can't have the F-16.

Is the die already cast on these F-16s? For the moment, Turkey has leverage with its opposition to Finland and Sweden's membership in Nato. Clearly, Congress could agree to the sale of these fighter-bombers in exchange for a lifting of the Turkish veto. But nothing is certain...

In any case, the pro-government daily Daily Sabah recently published an article arguing for the purchase of Eurofighter Typhoons.

"While Ankara is waiting for Washington's answer [about the F-16 Viper], the security environment continues to deteriorate. The conflict in Ukraine...has reintroduced war to the European continent and has the potential to destabilize the region. Russia has increased its presence in the Black Sea and continues to create security problems in Syria by allowing the presence of the 'terrorist' YPG group in the northeast of the country. In the eastern Mediterranean, the balance of air power has always been an important element in maintaining peace between neighbors. Greece's recent acquisition of French Rafales and the request to buy F-35s will give Athens the advantage," Daily Sabah notes.

Moreover, the newspaper continues, Turkey has no time to wait, especially since the Typhoon "meets the needs" of its air force, given that it is interoperable within the framework of Nato and is capable of "countering a wide variety of threats. He concluded: "Other important factors make the Typhoon the best choice for Ankara, such as the synergies between the Turkish defense industry and the companies in the Eurofighter consortium.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)