AgustaWestland Wins Turk Gunship Contest

[Aptrgangr]

AgustaWestland Wins Turk Gunship Contest

By BURAK EGE BEKDIL, ANKARA And UMIT ENGINSOY, WASHINGTON

Turkey has selected the AgustaWestland’s A129 Mangusta International as the winner of its nearly $2.7 billion attack helicopter contest for 50 platforms, and the two sides now will launch contract talks, Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul announced March 30.
“As a result of evaluation of bids from AgustaWestland and [South Africa’s] Denel, that earlier had been shortlisted in our Army’s attack helicopter project, we have decided to start contract negotiations with AgustaWestland,” he told reporters after a meeting of the Defense Industry Executive Committee, Turkey’s top decision-making body on defense procurement.
Deliveries of the helicopters are expected between 2011 and 2013, a Turkish defense source said.
The committee’s members include Gonul; Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan; Murad Bayar, the undersecretary of defense industries; and Army Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the General Staff.
Turkey’s Tusas Aerospace Industries (TAI), Akinci, will be the local prime contractor and jointly manufacture the platforms with AgustaWestland, Cascina Costa, Italy.
Gonul said that the top criterion in the selection of AgustaWestland over Pretoria-based Denel, maker of the CSH-2 Rooivalk, was a major price difference between the two sides’ bids.
He said this new Turkish attack helicopter would be dubbed T-129.
“This project has been around for some 12 years, and today we made a historic decision,” the defense minister said.
Gonul also announced that Turkey’s Otokar, a subsidiary of the Istanbul-based industry conglomerate Koc Holding, was selected to develop a new main battle tank for the Army in a program that could cost more than $10 billion over the next few decades.
Otokar had been in a fierce competition with another Turkish partnership, FNSS and BMC.
Under this program, Otokar will design, develop and manufacture a prototype of what officials call “Turkey’s national tank.”
“We will spend nearly $500 million for this initial phase of the project,” Gonul said.
The time table for the tank’s development remains unclear.

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This helicopter is perfectly suited to fight against insurgents, not only enemy tanks, I am sure Turkey bought it in order to have capabiliy to fight Kurdish insurgents. It is interesting to see how Turkey not only purchases most modern military hardware but builds it under licence and develops it further.