Turkey To Give Pakistan 30 Attack Helicopters
Turkey To Give Pakistan 30 Attack Helicopters: Turkish officials have confirmed that Islamabad and Ankara have reached a defense agreement for the sale of 30 attack helicopters to Pakistan.
Pakistan will be buying Turkish Aerospace Industries’s (TAI) T129 attack helicopters.
Turkish Aerospace Industries’s (TAI) T129)
The T129 is Turkey’s first locally manufactured platform under license. The T129 features
- a tandem seat cockpit,
- twin-engines and NATO-interoperability for attack,
- armed reconnaissance,
- precision-strike and deep-strike mission capabilities for day and night in all weather conditions.
- It can be armed with anti-tank missiles, various rocket pods and has a nose-mounted chaingun.
Pakistan and Turkey recently agreed on terms on the largest ever defense contract signed between the two countries.
TAI, maker of the T129 under license from the Italian-British AgustaWestland, has so far delivered 35 T129s to the Turkish Army and the Gendarmerie force.
Pakistan is known to have evaluated the Turkish-built version of the #AgustaWestland A129 Mangusta as part of an ongoing effort to procure new attack helicopters for Army Aviation.
With the Pakistan Army having already ordered 12 US-built Bell AH-1Z Vipers, it had since 2014 been testing the Chinese-built Z-10 the Turkish-made T129 since 2016.
Pakistan Army Aviation commander Major General Nasir Shah told earlier in the year that Islamabad was considering only a number of options to replace the ageing fleet of Bell AH-1 Cobras. The country recently received four Mi-35 attack helicopters from Russia, and will soon receive AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters.
COIN Operations
The current 32AH-1 helicopters have provided effective close support for our ground forces engaged in counter-insurgency [COIN] operations, but they cannot be employed effectively in high-altitude operations above 8,000 ft.
Price Not Disclosed
The Turkish government has not disclosed a price for the T129 deal with Pakistan, but aerospace industry sources estimate the contract to be worth about $1.5 billion, almost equivalent of Turkey’s annual defense exports.
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