The Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB) and Turkey’s aerospace giant, Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), signed a deal for the Heavy Class Attack Helicopter Project on Friday.

According to Daily Sabah, at SSB headquarters, the signing ceremony was attended by SSB Chairman İsmail Demir and representatives of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), TAI and the defense industry. The deal was signed by İsmail Demir, TAI General Manager Temel Kotil and TAI Chairman Oğuz Borat.

The Heavy Class Attack Helicopter Project, known as ATAK 2, has been launched to meet TSK’s requirements in this field.

The project aims to design and produce an effective and advanced attack helicopter with high maneuverability and performance that is capable of carrying a large useful load, resistant to challenging environmental factors and equipped with state-of-the-art technology target tracking and imaging, electronic warfare, navigation, communications and weapon systems.

The project also aims to maximize the use of domestic systems to ensure supply security and export freedom.

The Heavy Class Attack Helicopter Project is expected to play an important role in reducing external dependency in the defense sector, implementing domestic, national and innovative solutions with the fund of knowledge gained in current domestic projects and increasing the effectiveness of the TSK.

Conceived as a combination of T129 ATAK and T625, a new helicopter will use the sub-systems such as transmission, rotor systems and landing gears developed under the T625 Utility Helicopter Project as well as the technological know-how, operational experience and achievements gained through the T129 ATAK Helicopter Project.

ATAK 2, will be a combat helicopter that can successfully perform its missions in harsh geographical and environmental conditions, which will have increased payload capacity and modern avionic systems alongside with high performance and low maintenance cost.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Demir noted that the heavy class attack helicopter will add strength to the TSK and they expect the helicopter to be ready for flight in the prescribed time, like the Gökbey.

“Different versions and advanced models of our helicopters should not lag behind new technologies,” Demir said.

Turkey plans to test-run the next generation of its domestically-produced combat ATAK helicopter in 2024.