General Manager of Norbo Defense Industry- Mr. Cem Yazıcıoğlu made a statement to our magazine following the signature ceremony stating that the Gentex-Norbo Joint Venture Company established a facility with an area of over 3600 square-meters at the Başkent Organized Industrial Zone in Ankara and will be starting its production activities by the end of August and continued: “Specific types of helmets will be manufactured in Turkey and initially the helmets for the troops of the land forces will be produced. Gradually we will be stepping into the production of the helmets for the pilot of the Air Forces. As you know, Gentex Company is one of the greatest Military Helmets producers in the world and 99% of the helmets utilized by the pilots in helicopters and aircrafts in Turkey are procured again by the Gentex Company. İncorporation of this Joint Venture Company, maintenance to the existing helmet systems will be provided while the helmet systems requested by the Turkish Armed Forces will be manufactured in Turkey. As the Gentex-Norbo Joint Venture, we will be providing cost-efficient and high-tech products with high added value.”

During the recent period, especially considering the cross border operation, Gentex Company came up to the agenda with the helmet systems that saved the lives of the Turkish soldiers. Over approximately 20,000 helmets from the Gentex Company are being actively used by the Turkish troops in Turkey.

 Signing the agreement on behalf of the Gentex Company, Mr. Richard Dellar stated they were pleased to sign these two agreements at the IDEF and added: “Today, with this very first agreement signed by the Gentex and Fotoniks companies, we have signed an agreement that enables us to conduct joint R&D studies and we hope that we will be revealing crucial capabilities. Within the scope of the second agreement we signed today, we aim to increase the number of the helmets utilized and manufacture the helmets with superior technology in Turkey over the joint- venture production facility in Ankara, in addition to enable maintenance to the 20,000 helmets that are already being service. We are happy to enable the employment opportunities with the launch of this facility as well”. Mr. Richard Dellar also stated that they did not consider Turkey merely as a single market; with the production activities which will take place in this facility they were intending to conduct export activities to other countries over Turkey.

Gentex and Fotoniks to Conduct Joint Development Activities for the Helmet of the Future

The General Manager of Fotoniks - Mr. Cem Yazıcıoğlu mentioned that as a military electro-optics company, Fotoniks has been working to build the helmet systems of the future and continued: “As Fotoniks, we are striving the helmet systems of the future. Today we agreed on the joint development in which the Ballistic Protection system will be provided by Gentex Company and its integration with the electro-optical sensors and network based connection system architecture will be assumed by Fotoniks Company. We are living in the knowledge era and we are eager to gain the outstanding technologies that will convey this information to the battlefield. In order to achieve this, we aim to minimize the interfaces between the troops and the systems they utilize to the simplest level and create a system aligning with the ergonomics of the human beings without requiring many cables and equipment. Here, we do not aim only to reflect the night vision or the thermal camera to the soldiers’ eyes. On the contrary, we are willing to reveal unmatched helmet system of the 21st century that features integration with the GPS, direction finder, displaying GPS position depending on the units of the friend-or-foe, receiving messages similar with SMS from software based radios, such as Google Glass.”