The contents of the decisions taken by the Defense Industry Executive Committee (SSIK), which took place on January 31, 2018, began to emerge. Held under the chairmanship of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and attended by Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, Minister of National Defence Nurettin Canikli, Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu, Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar, important projects for land vehicles were signed at the meeting.
The first decision on land vehicles was related to the ‘Special Tactical Wheeled Armored Combat Vehicle’ program. With this program, more than 170 8X8 vehicles will be supplied from FNSS company in order to meet the urgent purchase requirement of Turkish Land Forces Command.
Another decision taken in the SSİK was taken to meet the needs of various forces. In this scope, contract negotiations with BMC for more than 700 4X4 vehicles will begin. Another decision to affect the workload of the BMC was related to the supply of 116 mine and ambush protected personnel carrier, KİRPİ (Hedgehog).
With these decisions, an important step was taken towards the procurement of about one thousand land vehicles. Despite the general public's expectation of a decision regarding the Altay Main Battle Tank, merely an information exchange on the subject was realized. OTOKAR, FNSS and BMC submitted their final proposals yesterday to the Undersecretariat for Defence Industries on February 8, 2018 for mass production of 250 Altay tank.
A comprehensive article on the decisions will take place on the 58th issue of the C4Defence magazine within a few days.