According to information published on the website of the Ukrainian defense magazine "Defense Express" on September 29, 2021, Ukraine has offered to equip Turkish-made Altay main battle tanks and Firtina 155mm howitzers with the latest generation of 6TD engine.
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Turkish-made Altay main battle tank at IDEF defense exhibition in Turkey, August 2021. (Picture source Army Recognition)
Citing Defense Express website, Ukraine company SE V.O.Malyshev Plant has proposed its 6TD-4 engine developing 1,500 hp^to equip the Turkish-made Altay main battle tank. According to General Designer Yegor Ovcharov, the Turkish industry has now received all the technical characteristics of this Ukrainian engine that could be jointly developed by the Ukrainian and Turkish manufacturers in the near future.
The 6TD-2 is already mounted on the Pakistani main battle tank Al-Khalid, the Oplot tank in service with Thailand, and the Ukrainian T-84 tank. The 6TD-2 is a supercharged 6-cylinder engine delivering 1,200 horsepower (890 kW). The 2-stroke design, with the pistons arranged horizontally in an opposed-piston configuration, makes the engine very compact and therefore more suitable for being fitted into relatively small vehicles such as the Al-Khalid tank.
The 6TD-4 is an improved version of the 6TD-3. The 6TD-4 is a liquid-cooled, two-stroke multi-fuel engine with six cylinders and 12 pistons. The engines' ejection-type cooling system enables a tank to operate in high ambient temperatures of up to 55°C without loss of power when using diesel fuel.
In March 2021, Army Recognition has published news to announce that Turkey was in negotiations with South Korea to procure engines for its domestic main battle tank Altay. This engine could be the South Korean Doosan Infracore DV27K, 4-cycle, 12-cylinder water-cooled diesel engine developing 1,500 hp.
At the same time, Turkey has launched the development of the first prototype of the Batu tank engine that could be mounted on the Altay MBT. The Batu is a powerpack developed by the Turkish company BMC including a Diesel engine and an automatic transmission. BMC signed a contract with SSB (Turkish Defense Association) on June 13, 2018. BMC launched the development of a new engine developing 1,600 hp in collaboration with the Italian manufacturer Fiat/Iveco.
