Turkey’s defense purchases to reach $8 billion by 2016
Umit ENGINSOY Hürriyet Daily News
With large
defense projects on the agenda, Turkey will spend $8 billion in defense
purchases, the country’s procurement office forecasts. This nearly
doubles the current volum.
Turkey will spend up to $8 billion in defense purchases as its exports
will reach $2 billion in 2016, four years from now, according to a major
estimation by the procurement agency, the Undersecretariat for Defense
Industries (SSM).
The present figures are around half of that.
The expectations in the SSM’s updated 2012-2016 strategic program are realistic given the money Turkey
would pay for expensive systems – such as the F-35s or the U-214
submarines from Germany – over the next few years, as well as the rapid
increase in its exports mainly to Islamic countries, according to one
defense analyst.
Turkey is in talks with four key foreign suppliers on a $4 billion Long Range Air and Missile Defense Systems project.
The
country’s mainly exports armored vehicles of many sorts, rockets and
other ammunition, as well as military electronics like radios, to more
than 10 Islamic countries. It also sells aviation equipment as part of
offset deals.
Fighter jet program delayed
Separately, Turkey
has delayed a program to develop a domestic fighter aircraft for the
Air Force nearly two years, the strategic document has revealed. “A
conceptual design ... for the fighter aircraft will be completed by the
end of 2014,” the SSM’s program said.
The defense minister at the time, Vecdi Gönül, announced on Dec. 14, 2010, that Turkey
would build a fighter aircraft, to be constructed together with a
friendly country or fully by itself, by the 100th anniversary of the
Turkish Republic in 2023.
Gönül told reporters after a meeting
of the Defense Industry Executive Committee that the SSM would start
talks with the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), the country’s main
aerospace company, for a “conceptual design” of a fighter aircraft and a
jet trainer to be built after the year 2020.
At the time, Gönül
said the TAI would have two years for the conceptual design. He said
Turkey’s newly designed fighter aircraft “would be a next-generation
type, replacing the [U.S.-made] F-4Es and functioning well with the F-16
and the F-35 … This is effectively a decision for the making of
Turkey’s first fighter aircraft.”
However, the new strategic document calls for the completion of the conceptual design by 2014.
“The
original timetable must be wrong. It’s impossible to complete the
conceptual design of a new aircraft in two years. The estimate is more
reasonable now,” said one senior procurement official.
Turkey
will buy around 100 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Lightning II aircraft
built by a team led by the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin, but Gönül said at
the time that they were planning to develop the new fighter with a
partner other than the United States.
Turkey previously had South Korea in mind, but one South Korean official in Ankara
said South Korea was at a more advanced stage than Turkey, and was
currently developing its KF-X model with Indonesia. “We can’t say at
this point whether it will be with South Korea or not,” Gönül said.
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