The engine for Turkey’s predominant battle tank (MBT) Altay has arrived from South Korea. Turkish land car producer BMC, the corporate that’s enterprise the Altay undertaking, signed an settlement with two South Korean corporations, Doosan Infracore Co. and S&T Dynamics Co., for the engine and transmission. Turkey initially kicked off the MBT undertaking in 2007, however the procurement of an engine proved an impediment for a while as some European corporations refused to promote the powering unit. Altay is a Turkish trendy predominant battle tank primarily based on South Korean K2 Black Panther to be produced by BMC underneath design help and know-how switch by Hyundai Rotem.
Beforehand, the next-generation battle tank’s prototype was powered by a 1,500 horsepower diesel engine from Germany’s MTU Friedrichshafen GmbH. The German Rheinmetall had additionally established a three way partnership with BMC aimed toward joint manufacturing of armored automobiles, notably the principle battle tank, Altay. Nevertheless, the manufacturing and provide of the tank engine got here to a halt following Berlin’s choice to restrict arms exports to Turkey, a longtime NATO ally. The German arms embargo got here on account of the flare-ups in Syria which have put weapons gross sales to Ankara underneath intense scrutiny by its Western allies.
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Whereas the Doosan Infracore product, a 1,500 hp rated 12-cylinder (V12) DV27K diesel engine, is used within the second batch of 106 K2 Black Panther Tanks produced for the Republic of Korea Military (ROKA), the S&T Dynamics product EST15K Computerized Transmission with hydraulic torque converter couldn’t be used within the first batch of 100 and the second batch of 106 K2 Tanks on account of technical issues. As a substitute, the German Renk product HSWL 495TM Computerized Transmission was used within the tanks. The domestically designed and produced EST15K Computerized Transmission is meant for use with the DV27K Diesel Engine within the third batch of 54 K2 tanks anticipated to be ordered this yr.
Germany has repeatedly introduced that it limits arms gross sales to Turkey, which launched a counterterrorism operation in northern Syria that focused each Daesh terrorists and the Kurdistan Employees’ Occasion (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane, PKK) terrorist group and its Syrian department, the YPG. Ankara has lengthy criticized German authorities for not taking critical measures towards the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey, the US and the European Union, and waged a terror marketing campaign towards Turkey for greater than 40 years, inflicting the deaths of almost 40,000 folks, together with ladies and kids.
