October 14, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, C4ISR, Security
ANKARA, Turkey — The Canadian government's decision to suspend export of key drone parts to Turkey has once again thrown a spotlight on Turkey's ongoing efforts to develop a self-sufficient defense industry.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan often boasts at party rallies that his governance since 2002 has reduced Turkey's dependency on foreign weapons systems from 80 percent to 30 percent. There is truth in that, although the actual percentages remain a mystery, mainly due to the difficulty of defining what is truly a local or national system.
Most Turkish “national” systems depend on various degrees of foreign input, often including critical parts only available abroad. The T129, an “indigenous” attack helicopter, is a Turkish variant of the Italian-British AgustaWestland A129 Mangusta chopper. Turkey's local industry has no engine technology.
The “national” new generation tank Altay is facing major delays, due to the lack of a foreign engine and transmission system. Turkey's first “indigenous” landing platform dock, the TCG Anadolu, will enter into service next year, but the $1 billion or more ship is being built under license from Spain's Navantia.
Even Turkey's biggest success in the past few years, a locally-built drone known as the Bayraktar TB-2, features critical foreign parts — an issue now in the spotlight following Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne's Oct. 5 announcement to suspend export permits of drone technology to Turkey, which is backing Azerbaijan in the recent Azeri-Armenian military conflict.
Champagne issued the pause in exports alongside an order for his ministry to investigate claims that Canadian drone technology is being used in the fighting. The decision followed an announcement by disarmament group Project Ploughshares, which warned the multimillion-dollar exports of high-tech sensors and targeting technology produced by L3Harris WESCAM in Burlington, Ont., are in direct contravention of Canada's domestic laws and its international obligations under the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, to which the Trudeau government acceded almost exactly a year ago.
L3Harris WESCAM, the Canadian subsidiary of U.S. defense giant L3Harris, is one of the world's leading producers and exporters of electro-optical/infra-red (EO/IR) imaging and targeting sensor systems — both of which are featured on the Bayraktar drones.
“These sensors are integral for their ability to conduct drone warfare, which they've done increasingly... in the past few years across several conflict zones,” Kelsey Gallagher, a Project Ploughshares researcher, told Radio Canada International. “If the exports of these sensors were completely halted, then Turkey would not have the sensors necessary to conduct modern airstrikes.”
“This [the suspension of Canadian supplies] may cause disruption in the production line,” said one local aerospace analyst, “unless substituted immediately.”
“There may be some other foreign suppliers to be used as a stop-gap solution," the analyst added. "But this is mostly a Western (including Israeli) technology and may not reach Turkish manufacturers due to political reasons.”
Turkey's top procurement official, however, has a solution. Ismail Demir, president of the defense procurement agency SSB, twitted Oct. 6, the day after the Canadian decision, that Turkey would soon start to mass produce the CATS electro-optical system, to replace the WESCAM technology used in the TB-2 drone.
CATS will be produced by military electronics specialist Aselsan, Turkey's biggest defense company. Demir said that Aselsan has also begun to work on developing a future version of the CATS system.
Demir also talked up another new indigenous ambition: Project Özgür, or “free” in Turkish. Özgür is part of a broader upgrade effort designed to extend the life of the Turkish F-16 fleet.
“This program aims to completely nationalize electronic systems on our F-16s,” Demir told the HaberTurk newspaper Oct. 6. The full upgrade work will also involve structural and avionic modernization.
Turkey views the F-16 upgrades as a stop-gap solution before it builds its own indigenous fighter, the TF-X. But the TF-X effort has moved at a crawl, with no notable progress in the past few years, due mainly to the lack of an engine to power the planned fighter.
November 15, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Huntsville, Ala., November 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) today opened a $16.5M engineering facility at its Huntsville campus, introducing more capabilities for missile defense innovation in North...
July 26, 2019 | International, Aerospace
WASHINGTON — The Air Force's No. 2 officer has a countdown on his iPhone for the first B-21 Raider flight, and it may happen sooner than you think: December 2021, to be exact. “Don't hold me to it, but it's something like 863 days to first flight,” said Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Stephen Wilson, according to Air Force Magazine. Wilson, who spoke July 24 at an AFA Mitchell Institute event, said he had recently visited B-21 prime contractor Northrop Grumman's facilities in Melbourne, Fla., and that the company was “moving out on that pretty fast.” The 863-day countdown — if it is accurate — would peg the Raider's inaugural flight to Dec. 3, 2021. And while there's still ample time for design problems and budget setbacks to delay that schedule, analysts said the Air Force's disclosure of the first flight date means that the secretive bomber program is likely moving along smoothly. “A lot can happen in two years. But if they feel that confident about the schedule it's a good sign that things are on course,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group. The short timeline between the contract award to Northrop Grumman in 2015 — which withstood a Boeing-Lockheed protest in 2016 — and first flight in 2021 could be a sign the B-21's air vehicle design is a smaller version of the B-2 Spirit, he said. “Which, of course, would mean a lot less risk and reasonably fast schedule,” Aboulafia said. “There's not a reason for the airframe itself to have to change radically. It's everything else about it that needs to be modernized, and it seems they think they can make do with a smaller system with less range. If you accept that thinking as the likely reality, then that would make for less risk and a relatively short development schedule. That all makes sense.” However, it is possible that there have been major design changes, in which case it's likely that several sub-scale or even full-scale demonstrators will fly before 2021, he added. Roman Schweizer, an analyst of Cowen Washington Research Group, said a 2021 first flight is a “significant new data point” that meshes well with the company's projected schedule of the program. “We believe the next major milestone for the program will be a Production Readiness Review that will clear the way for manufacturing the first prototype aircraft. Based on the program's next R&D funding step-up, we expect this could happen sometime later this calendar year to allow manufacturing to begin in FY20,” he wrote in an email to investors on Wednesday. In March, Bloomberg reported that procurement spending for the B-21 program would start in FY22 with $202 million in funding, shooting up to $2.4 billion the following year and $3.3 billion in FY24. “That could mean Low-Rate Production in FY23,” Schweizer wrote. “That would also make sense after flight test evaluations of the prototype (and possibly several others).” The Air Force has kept tight hold on details related to the Raiders development, keeping much of its budget in the “black” or classified portion of the funding request. The last major B-21 related disclosure was the December 2018 announcement that the program had completed its critical design review. Wilson's statements follow Acting Secretary of the Air Force Matt Donovan's visit to Northrop's B-21 Design and Development Headquarters in Melbourne., on July 19. Donovan was accompanied by Randy Walden, director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, which is responsible for executing the program. “We look forward to receiving the B-21 on time and incorporating it into our future force,” Donovan said after the visit. “The B-21 will be a significant component of our Air Force as we continue to modernize to meet the National Defense Strategy and is a game-changing capability to win the high-end fight.” By Valerie Insinna https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/07/25/coming-in-2021-the-b-21-raiders-first-flight/
November 15, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Italy's state-controlled defence and aerospace group Leonardo on Wednesday said it would sell a 6.3% minority stake in its U.S. subsidiary Leonardo DRS on the market.