Turkey May Adopt Chinese Air Defense System

ANKARA — Turkey is strongly leaning toward adopting a Chinese long-range anti-missile and air defense system, Turkish procurement officials said, even though it may be impossible to integrate the system with its existing NATO architecture.

One senior procurement official familiar with the program said the Turkish government has concluded that the Chinese proposal was technologically satisfactory, allowed technology transfer and was much cheaper than rival proposals.

The decision to select the Chinese contender awaits final approval from Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The decision would be finalized and officially announced at the next meeting of the Defense Industry Executive Committee, chaired by Erdogan, which oversees major procurement decisions. No date has been set for the meeting.

In January, Turkey restructured the $4 billion program, dubbed T-Loramids, which had originally been constructed as an off-the-shelf purchase. The contenders’ bids would remain valid, but the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries (SSM) procurement office would ask bidders to submit parallel, co-production solutions. Erdogan ordered the launch of feasibility studies on “potential co-production” of the system.

T-Loramids consists of radar, launcher and intercept missiles.

The same month, SSM wrote to the bidders and asked them to send letters of intent for any co-production deal. The bidders are a U.S. partnership of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, offering the Patriot air defense system; Russia’s Rosoboronexport, marketing the S-300; the China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corp., offering its HQ-9 (*); and the Italian-French consortium Eurosam, maker of the SAMP/T Aster 30.

T-Loramids, has been designed to counter both enemy aircraft and missiles. Turkey has no long-range air defense systems.

But diplomats and analysts warn that Turkey may not be allowed to integrate the Chinese-Turkish system into Turkey’s mostly NATO-owned early warning assets.

“I cannot comment on how the [US] administration would react to that. But I can tell you that integrating a Chinese or Chinese-Turkish air defense system into NATO assets may not be a good idea,” a US diplomat here said.

A Western industry source said that US officials have warned the Turkish bureaucrats several times about the potential difficulties in achieving interoperability if Turkey decided to go for a Chinese or a Russian architecture.

“I see that the Turks remain defiant. But I do not think it would be practically possible to integrate either the air defense or the anti-missile components of the planned Turkish-Chinese architecture into NATO radars,” a London-based Turkey specialist said. “The Turks would have the same problem if they chose the Russian system, but I think for the Americans, China represents a more direct threat.”

About half of Turkey’s network-based air defense picture (radars) has been paid for by NATO, said a Turkish defense official familiar with NATO work. They are part of the NATO Air Defense Ground Environment. He did not comment on potential problems if Turkey wanted to make the planned system interoperable with these assets.

To defend against missile threats, Turkey needs satellite and dedicated ballistic missile detection and tracking radar like the NATO radar deployed last year in Kurecik.

For the anti-aircraft component, Turkey needs an overall picture for data fusion. The Patriot system, for instance, can detect threats with its own radar. So does the Chinese system. But without integrating into a full air picture, the Chinese system could not work efficiently, officials said.

“Turkey can always decide to build a stand-alone system. But in that case, abstracting the air defense system from NATO assets would mean that Turkey will lose half of its radar capabilities,” said one defense analyst here.

He said Turkey would need interface data to make its own air defense architecture interoperable with NATO assets, primarily data on the identify friend or foe system.

“This is top secret and cannot be installed into any Chinese system,” the analyst said.

Another major question, he said, is “how would Turkey have in its possession a made-in-China IFF system, and how would that system be integrated into its fleet of F-16 aircraft?

“There is an important degree of incompatibility here and all in all any Chinese-Turkish co-production program would look problematic,” he said.

Defense News

(*): Chinese HQ-9 is a modern mobile strategic SAM system roughly analogous to the Russian-made S-300PMU (SA-10B GRUMBLE). The HQ-9 has a range of 100 kilometers, an increase over the S-300PMU’s 90 kilometer maximum range but less than that of the S-300PMU-1′s 150 kilometers.

Lockheed, Mitsubishi Sign F-35 FACO Deal

WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin has signed an agreement with Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. to begin work on a final assembly and check out (FACO) facility for Japanese F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

The contract was announced by Steve O’Bryan, Lockheed’s vice president in charge of the F-35 program, at this week’s Paris Air Show.

While declining to give contract figures for the deal, Eric Schnaible, Lockheed’s spokesman for Japanese F-35 issues, said Lockheed hopes to replace the contract, which runs through the end of 2013, with a five-year deal sometime by mid-October.

“We are committed to maintaining our successful long-term partnership with Japanese industry as we mature the Japan F-35 program,” Schnaible said. “Over time, we believe Japanese industry will become a key provider in the F-35 supply chain for both production and sustainment.”

The Pentagon’s Joint Program Office declined to comment on the news, noting FACO decisions are made between Lockheed and the host country.

While this contract is a major step towards getting the FACO up and running, it will be some time before locally assembled F-35s take off. The first four aircraft will be produced at Lockheed’s Forth Worth, Texas, assembly line for a 2016 delivery.

The remaining 38 will be assembled at the Japanese facility. Plans currently call for the FACO to produce parts for Japanese planes only, in accordance with Japan’s long-held ban on weapon exports. However, there has been speculation in Japanese media that the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may experiment with the exportation of Japanese-design parts for F-35s around the world.

Japan’s FACO will be the second international facility for the F-35. Italy’s FACO at Cameri Air Force Base is set to open next month.

Defense News

After 2 Years, BAE 'Close to Sealing Typhoons Deal'

Britain's BAE Systems, Europe's biggest defense company, reportedly expects to wrap up a price deal with Saudi Arabia for 72 Eurofighter Typhoon combat jets after two years of tortuous negotiations.

But with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, during which the Arab world pretty much shuts down, beginning in early July, BAE may have to wait until August for a conclusion.

Another factor is the Saudi monarchy's human rights record, which has been criticized by British lawmakers in recent months amid hefty and persistent media coverage of allegations of corruption in Riyadh.

In May, the British newspaper The Guardian published documents released by Britain's court of appeal concerning allegations two Saudi princes were involved with a London company that allegedly facilitated money laundering for Hezbollah in Lebanon, an Iranian-backed movement designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

The two princes, who deny the allegations linking them to a sworn enemy of the Saudi monarchy, had sought to obtain a court ruling of sovereign immunity that would have blocked publication of the documents.

In another case, a prominent member of the Saudi royal family is at the center of a U.S. criminal investigation into whether Barclays, a leading British bank, made improper payments in the kingdom, apparently involving a son of King Abdullah.

The Saudis agreed to buy 72 Typhoons in 2007 with a reputed price tag of $8.6 billion.

BAE was secretive about the price details and admitted in December 2012 the delays in completing negotiations on the so-called Salaam Program were depressing its year-end earnings.

The first 24 were delivered in 2012 and 48 more were supposed to be assembled in Saudi Arabia, which is striving to develop a defense industry of its own.

But Riyadh decided to continue having the Typhoons assembled at BAE's facility in the United Kingdom and to upgrade the last 24 aircraft it ordered with the latest technology.

This altered the pricing process, and made the contract more valuable.

But BAE's expectations the Saudis would sign up to the price changes as well as the general inflation in prices the project had already absorbed were soon dashed.

That came hard on the heels of the October collapse of a proposed $40 billion merger with EADS, the Franco-German builder of the Airbus and Europe's aerospace giant.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has aggressively pushed British arms exports, visited Riyadh in November 2012 to press the Saudis to finalize the 2007 Typhoon deal.

There have been reports the kingdom is interested in buying 48- to 72 more Tranche 3 Typhoons, a deal that would be worth $7.3 billion to $11.2 billion.

The Eurofighter consortium comprises BAE, EADS and Finmeccanica of Italy, but BAE takes the lead in marketing in the gulf where Britain was the dominant power until 1972 when it reduced its military presence east of the Suez.

However, the Saudis are committed to buying 84 Boeing F-15S Eagles and dozens of helicopters from Boeing and Sikorsky Aircraft, a division of United Technologies Corp., for $33.4 billion as part of a massive U.S. arms package to counter Iran.

BAE concluded a $4.07 billion contract with the Persian Gulf sultanate of Oman in December to buy 12 Typhoons and eight Hawk advanced jet trainers starting in 2017.

That deal got BAE out of the hole, helping to safeguard some 6,000 jobs in the United Kingdom after the EADS merger plan fell through, largely because of German opposition, that would have sheltered the defense titan from the effects of shrinking defense budgets in the United States and Europe.

Meantime, the negotiations with the Saudis dragged on and BAE's delivery rate of the Typhoons slowed to nearly zero, with only two of the jets reaching in the kingdom in more than a year.

Deliveries are now back on track, raising expectations of a conclusion to the complex pricing problem.

There are plans to establish a maintenance and upgrade facility in Saudi Arabia, but BAE executives have their eyes on the ultimate prize: that the kingdom will double its Typhoon order.

UPI