The Defense Industry Executive Committee, Turkey’s top decision-making body on procurement, is expected to select a winner next week for a $4 billion contract to produce about a hundred military-grade helicopters. The main contenders are Italy’s AgustaWestland and the U.S.’ Sikorsky Aircraft
Turkey next week is due to select a winner in a competition between an Italian firm and a U.S. company for a major program to jointly produce its military’s next utility helicopter type. The contenders vying for the $4 billion contract are the mainly Italian AgustaWestland and the U.S. Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.
The Defense Industry Executive Committee, Turkey’s top decision-making body on defense procurement – whose members include Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül, Chief of General Staff Gen. Işık Koşaner and procurement chief Murad Bayar – will gather Dec. 15, one senior procurement official told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday.
“The committee is expected to choose a winner for our utility helicopter program at next week’s meeting,” the official said.
AgustaWestland is proposing its TUHP 149, a Turkish version of its A149, a newly developed utility helicopter. The A149’s full prototype will have its first flight in January.
Sikorsky Aircraft is offering the T-70, the Turkish version of the S-70 Black Hawk International, which can be found in the inventories of dozens of countries around the world, including Turkey.
The competition is for a first batch of 109 utility helicopters, mostly for the military and security forces. But the number is expected to rise to about 300 in later years.
A top Sikorsky official announced in early October that his company had a fourfold benefit package worth billions of dollars to offer to Turkey. “If Turkey selects us for the 109 helicopter program, we will buy another 109 to be manufactured in Turkey, and export them to third countries,” Steve Estill, vice president for strategic partnerships at the Sikorsky president’s office, said at the time.
Sikorsky also is proposing to buy $1.3 billion worth of Turkish-made helicopter components, to set up a regional Black Hawk support base in Turkey and to invest in a future Turkish project to build a light utility helicopter, Estill said.
Tough competition
AgustaWestland shortly later challenged Sikorsky’s proposal. “Our competition is offering the manufacture under license of an already existing product,” Guiseppe Orsi, chief executive officer of AgustaWestland said in late October. “We are offering much, much more. We are offering Turkey to become a joint developer of a brand-new product. Turkey may become a real helicopter player in the world if it chooses us.”
Orsi said nearly 8,000 utility helicopters are expected to be replaced in the world in the upcoming decades, suggesting that his company’s Turkish program could grab international orders for at least 800 of those.
Assuming that each helicopter’s acquisition price and its lifetime maintenance cost are both are around $25 million, and the TUHP program gets orders for 800 platforms over the next 25-30 years, “the program would collect a total of $40 billion, half of which would go to Turkey,” he said.
Turkey’s Army, Navy, Air Force, Special Operations Command and Coast Guard Command are among the buyers of the first batch of military utility helicopters.
The Turkish Aerospace Industries, or TAI, Turkey’s main aerospace manufacturer, officially will be the program’s prime contractor. Several other Turkish firms also will take part in the production.
Presently, the Turkish military is operating several different types of utility helicopters. The military has more than 100 S-70s, more than 100 older U.S.-made UH-1 Hueys, around 20 French-designed AS-532 Cougars and about 15 Russian Mi-17s.
AgustaWestland secured two earlier contracts, worth billions of dollars each, to lead the joint production of 60 T-129 attack helicopters for the Turkish Army.
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