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Lockheed Martin, which ranked first among the top 10 U.S. defense contractors in 1998 and 1999 in terms of contract amount awarded by the U.S. Defense Department, has already completed the local assembly of F-16s for Turkey. The company's plans to help Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) assemble an additional 32 F-16s have been suspended due to budget restrictions in Turkey. Today's challenge in defense is different from that of 10 years ago, says Jamerson, bringing to mind today's dilemma, for example, of which tanks one can produce and which one cannot produce. "Since technology changes so rapidly, how countries will handle high technology changing in a time frame is a serious problem. What is critical today may not be critical tomorrow. But Turkey is on the right path in its strategy of gaining technology," Jamerson stated. However, Jamerson stressed that in the absence of allocating the necessary amount of money to Research and Development (R&D) activities, a country will always depend heavily on others in high tech. Turkey's resources allocated to R&D activities still remain at only a little more than 1 percent. Under the 1998 defense industry strategy paper that Turkey has adopted, the prime aim is to bring in high tech to lessen dependency on other countries. However, as Jamerson noted, another great challenge in defense cooperation is how to share the technology. "Sharing technology between countries with different capacities is a problem. For example, the United States has high technology. Turkey has good technology but cannot match the United States," commented Jamerson. For example, in the case of Turkey's attack helicopter project the United States refuses to transfer major technologies to Turkey. As part of its strategy to expand its activities in Turkey Lockheed Martin is currently negotiating with Turkey for the sale of 216 Hellfire missiles to be fitted on nine Turkish Super Cobras in its inventory. The project is valued at about $16 million. Three companies out of five bidding in Turkey's $4 billion attack helicopter project have also been offering Lockheed Martin-made AGM-114K Hellfire II missiles to be equipped on their models. If one of the companies offering HellFires wins Turkey's multi-billion-dollar tender, Lockheed Martin hopes to expand its partnership with local Roketsan (Rocket Industry Co.). Under the attack helicopter project missiles to be equipped on attack helicopters will be produced jointly by Roketsan. In cooperation with local company Havelsan, Lockheed Martin is setting up $160 million in information systems in batches for the Air Forces Command. The final batch due to be completed in the year 2006 will worth a total of $260 million. Due to a controversy surrounding the project when it was contracted to German firm Dasa two years ago, it was given to Lockheed Martin. An international arbitration court in Switzerland has been looking into the matter following Dasa's complaints. (Turkish Daily News, Lale Sariibrahimoglu)
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vice president of U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin, retired Gen.
James L. Jamerson, says in a world where technologies change rapidly,
the big challenge for Turkey is which technologies it will pursue.
Jamerson outlined the challenges of the century as the threat of
ballistic missiles, rapid changes in technology and resource allocation
in nation's defense due to their high cost. Jamerson, who has been
promoted to take charge of the entire Middle East region within Lockheed
Martin at the beginning of March in addition to his current areas of
responsibility -- Turkey and Israel -- spoke about the company's future
strategy of expanding in Turkey's lucrative defense industry market. In
the face of shrinking defense budgets that have been seen mainly in
Europe since the demise of the Soviet Union, Lockheed Martin is among
major defense companies seeking to grab a bigger share from the Turkish
defense pie. Turkey decided in 1997 to allocate $150 billion in the
coming 25 to 30 years for defense procurement.