BMC, the industry developer and manufacturer of the new Turkish Altai main battle tank, announced that it will now purchase engine power packs directly from South Korea’s Doosan and SNT Dynamics.
This move seems to replace the previously proposed arrangement to jointly develop a power pack for the tank, thereby jointly producing engines and gearboxes in Turkey. A source from BMC said: “The new understanding is a ready-made acquisition of Korean power packs.” The Korean company’s efforts include not only providing power packs, but also engineering support and testing support for integrating them into Altai.
BMC officials predict that this work may see the new power unit merged into Altay within 18 months.
BMC won the Altay development contract in November 2018. Its first T1 phase includes the production of 250 tanks, and provides full life cycle logistics support, and the establishment of a tank system technology center. In the T2 phase, a more advanced version will be developed, and about 1,000 main battle tanks are planned to be produced and deployed. A future T3 stage model with an unmanned turret is also envisaged.
The Republic of Korea and its industries have been involved in the development of Altay since 2007. Altay has been programmed to use the German MTU 1500 horsepower engine and RENK transmission, however, due to the German arms embargo, these have become unavailable for Turkey to participate in the Syrian civil war. These will be replaced by Doosan’s DV27K engine and SNT Dynamics EST15K, the latter’s export has been approved by the Korea Defense Procurement Planning Authority in late October 2021. However, there are concerns that the US government may not agree and exert pressure to prevent this transaction.
Stephen W. Miller
