Turkey to begin manufacturing national helicopter within next 5 years

Turkey to begin manufacturing national helicopter within next 5 years

Turkey plans to begin manufacturing its own national military helicopter within the next five years, Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz said Friday.

Yilmaz submitted his ministry's budget for 2012 to the parliamentary planning and budget commission, saying that Turkey aims to meet domestic demand as well as that of other countries in the region with the new helicopter manufacturing plans, local newspaper Today's Zaman reported on its website.

Yilmaz was quoted as saying that Turkey would also begin to design and develop warplanes and training aircraft, adding that Turkey would also design air defense systems and begin production within next five years.

The size of the world helicopter market is currently estimated at 20 billion U.S. dollars and the volume of Turkey's defense industry is about 2.7 billion dollars . It is estimated that Turkey's defense industry exports will multiply several fold with the domestic production of military helicopters.

The total worth of various defense projects Turkey is currently undertaking is about 10 billion dollars and some 7 billion dollars of this is allocated to the military's helicopter project. In the latest purchase of this kind, Turkey bought 109 helicopters from the U.S.-based Sikorsky company for 3.5 billion dollars.

Editor: yan

English.news.cn   2011-11-04 22:54:17 FeedbackPrintRSS
ANKARA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua)