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T-129 Atak & Turkish Attack Helicopter Programs

They saw the export potential of the platform.. this is not good news for us, unfortunately.
 
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They saw the export potential of the platform.. this is not good news for us, unfortunately.

Yeah, but only after Turkey made it that with recent export deals to Pakistan and probaby future deals with Marocco and Philipines. This platform was loosing tender after tender before T129. Which shows how much political cloat and expanding international relations has influence in selling the weapon systems. Poland being Poland, I think theres no way they would buy turkish version, cause you know history and all that. Which is fine.
 
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AW249 is not a new development. It's been Italy's plan to replace their Mangusta for a while and Leonardo has been looking for partners since last year, now Poland.

T129 was a very smart business decision by Leonardo. Many here may not know that Leonardo themselves market the T129 (sometimes calling it TAI T129 instead of TAI/AW T129) since it earns them money. It's not competition for them, but a gateway to more markets. Turkey is Italy's trump card against other Europeans and Americans.

A129-I, the original T129, losing bid to Tiger was a wake-up call.
 
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Even if the italians manage to sell the platform to others, I think what matters for some countries are how reliable delivery is. Picking Turkey over some european country means you're guaranteed delivery, and for some that means more than a few million USD in difference. I think that's what's going to matter for non european countries.

Also let's not forget that Poland is actually capable of R&D themselves, so picking AW is just to get over some upstart difficulties. IMO the cooperation between Italy and Poland makes sense, and would work out very well.

I think what matters is that we've proven T129 works as intended, and that has ALWAYS been the most important factor when you want to sell military hardware.

Which is why I would have bloody loved to see the FNSS MT Kaplan (if we had prototypes that could be used) participate in Afrin with success. Then we'd definitely sell many more of them.
 
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Another thing to consider is "Milli and Yerli" is NOT a must to make money. It is required for embargo situations.
Yet its still better because it created jobs, strenghtens industry, generates taxes, the revenue would be multiplied by nationalizing as much as possible.
 
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