Two South Korean Companies to Supply Engines for Turkey's Altay Tank

Turkey’s BMC said that the company signed an agreement with Doosan and S&T Dynamics to supply Altay's engine and transmission mechanism.

“Kang Eun-ho, the Minister responsible for the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), said that he signed the declaration of intent on the supply of Altay Tank engines today,” Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs tweeted on October 22.

A senior BMC official told Defenceturk.net that the company reached an agreement with Doosan and S&T Dynamics for the delivery of Altay engine components.

Altay program suffered a setback due to Turkey’s political differences with Germany, where the engines were originally meant to come from. The Turks had earlier hoped to power the Altay with the German MTU engine and RENK transmission. Talks with German manufacturers over the past couple of years failed due to a federal arms embargo on Turkey, imposed for its involvement in the Syrian Civil War.

Turkey also has a problem with importing French armor for the Altay tank following clashes with France over its hydrocarbons exploration in the Mediterranean Sea last year. Paris had weighed in on the side of Turkey’s  arch rival Greece.

BMC officials had told Defense News earlier that in order to bypass German export license restrictions, the South Korean companies will “de-Germanize” some German components in the power pack.

The Altay program is broken into two phases: T1 and T2. T1 covers the first 250 units, and T2 involves the advanced version of the tank. Turkey also plans to eventually produce 1,000 Altays, to be followed by an unmanned version.