The Altay, Turkey’s first local-made main battle tank under development, should receive an engine designed and manufactured by BMC, a privately owned Turkish armoured vehicles manufacturer.
The Altay, Turkey's future indigenous main battle tank (Picture source: Army Recognition)
The country’s defense procurement agency has tasked the company with developing a locally made engine between 400 and 1,500 HP. But BMC announced they even started to develop a 5,000 HP engine. According to TechWatch, more than 200 scientists (among whom 70 are foreigners) are now working on the program.
In 2017, five Turkish companies replied to the government’s request for proposal concerning the programme aiming at developing a power pack for the Altay. This programme involves the design, development and production of hundreds of engines and transmission mechanisms for the tank. The Altay program involves an initial batch of 250 units, but the number of tanks Turkey could purchase will likely go up to 1,000 units.
As a reminder, the bidders were BMC, Figes, Istanbul Denizcilik, Tusas Engine Industries and Tumosan. The country’s procurement agency, the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, or SSM, selected BMC as the winner. BMC is a Turkish-Qatari armoured vehicles manufacturer.
In the Altay serial production race BMC will be competing with FNSS and Otokar, the maker of Altay’s prototypes. Procurement sources say the government’s final decision on the multibillion-dollar serial production contract will likely come later in 2018.
the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries says the engine program aims to end Turkey’s dependency on foreign power technology in the Altay program. One of the failed bidders in the engine competition, Tumosan in 2015 won a $100 million contract to develop an engine for the Altay. It then signed a know-how deal with Austrian AVL List GmbH, but in 2016 this key technical support contract was canceled as part of Austria’s arms embargo on Turkey.
