“Thinking Global and Acting Local”, The Turkish Aerospace and Defence Market is Positioned for Take off with Honeywell
Defence Turkey: First of all Thank you very much for the interview. Could you please inform us about Honeywell Turkey’s office, its structure and activities?
Mr. Orhan Geniş : Honeywell is a diversified technology and manufacturing company serving customers worldwide with aerospace products and services; control, sensing, and security technologies for buildings, homes and industry; turbochargers; automotive products; specialty chemicals; electronic and advanced materials; process technology for refining and petrochemicals; and energy-efficient products and solutions for home, business, and transportation sectors.
Honeywell’s Aerospace products and services are used globally on virtually every commercial and business aircraft operating today, as well as for defence and space applications to make flying safer, more reliable, more efficient, and more cost effective. Honeywell Aerospace also provides comprehensive global aftermarket services and support, including logistics, engineering services, and customer-tailored solutions that include a broad range of repair and overhaul programs, digitization, and innovative service solutions.
Turkey, and indeed the Central Asian region, have been identified as “high growth” regions for us, where we see opportunity to support the growth of industry with large parts of our portfolio. High-growth countries such as China, India, Russia, Middle East, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Vietnam, Turkey and the central Asian region are experiencing rapid urbanization, a significant rise of a middle class population, growing demand for energy and resources, and huge investments in infrastructure construction -- all of which present huge opportunities for Honeywell’s three strategic business groups – Aerospace, Automation and Control Systems and Performance Materials and Technologies.
“Thinking global and acting local” is the foundation block of our High-Growth Region management strategy. This ensures we can deliver capabilities from across our portfolio seamlessly, addressing each market’s unique requirements. We also have a strong corporate social responsibility culture, and our regional organizations play an active role in contributing to the training and education of local people to ensure the future economic growth of these countries.
Defence Turkey: What are Honeywell’s core capabilities, technologies, products focused on aerospace and defence?
Mr. Orhan Geniş : Honeywell Defence & Space (D&S) is a world leader in the supply of diverse products for defence and space applications. Honeywell D&S designs and manufactures propulsion engines, auxiliary power units, environmental control systems, life support systems, avionics, controls, wheels and brakes, actuators, valves, electrical power generation and distribution systems, and lighting for defence companies and governments worldwide. This includes fixed wing aircraft, helicopters, surface systems (land and water) and space. In addition to our products, Honeywell provides a worldwide service and support network.
Defence Turkey: Could you please enlighten us about past Honeywell activities performed over the years in Turkey?
Mr. Orhan Geniş : Since 1992 Honeywell has been serving in our country with its own office and staff comprised completely of Turkish engineers and employees. The giant industrial facilities such as Tüpraş, and Petkim use Honeywell automation systems for better quality and more efficient production and less energy is consumed, and a more comfortable and safer environment is created for the employees in many smart buildings such as the Towers of İş Bankası, and the Ford Otosan Factory, thanks to the automation systems installed by Honeywell Turkey.
In line with the gradually increasing importance of Turkey in the international arena, the office of Honeywell Turkey has progressed rapidly from being a local office to the territorial headquarters for the “Turkey & Central Asia” region. With a demonstration and training center in operation at the Honeywell Turkey office since 2012, Honeywell Turkey has been able to provide training services to many countries.
We continue to deliver technologies that improve efficiency and reliability on defence platforms operating in Turkey today. These include the F-16, C-130, UH-1 and UH-60. Our T55 engines also power the CH-47 Chinook Heavy Lift Helicopter, a new fleet of which is on order for the Turkish Army. In addition we are working to identify opportunities on forthcoming indigenous platforms, including the Turkish Light Utility Helicopter, Trainer/Fighter and UAV as well as our continued support for the propulsion engines on the T129 Atak helicopter program.
Defence Turkey: It is known that Honeywell is one of the candidates within the Indigenous Helicopter Program. Could you please inform us about your activities in this program? What is your technological competence on the engine systems that you offered for this project?
Mr. Serdar Çetingül : Originally developed for the stringent requirements of the US Army Comanche helicopter program, the CTS800 turboshaft engine is a product of the Light Helicopter Turbine Engine Company (LHTEC), a highly successful 50/50 partnership dating back to 1984 between Honeywell International and Rolls-Royce plc. The CTS800 engine offers unparalleled levels of power-to-weight ratio and fuel-burn economy in a compact package with unmatched performance for high & hot operational environment, supportability and maintainability characteristics. These inherent features combine to provide exceptional improvements in cost of ownership, on-wing performance, operational capability, and logistical support flexibility, all of which have been verified as a result of extensive testing, demonstrations, and validations conducted by the U.S. Army throughout the Comanche helicopter program.
The U.S. Army needed a high performance helicopter but also one that could offer significant fuel efficiency gains over the existing fleet -- as a result the CTS800 efficient engine was designed to offer the lowest SFC for a turboshaft engine in its size class, consuming only 0.46 lbs. of fuel/ lbs. of power. The CTS800 features a two-stage centrifugal flow compressor and annular reverse flow combustor, as well as a two-stage axial flow turbine operating at an output speed of 23,00rpm and a Digital FADEC with built in test capability.
Both Honeywell and Rolls-Royce understand the need for the Turkish Light Utility Helicopter to meet the global market demands of a modern five ton helicopter platform, with significant input in its development coming from Turkish industry. To achieve this objective LHTEC is pursuing a civil export version of the CTS800 engine that will incorporate substantial Turkish collaboration design projects and industrialization via parts manufacturing, production assembly test, and depot repair establishment.
Defence Turkey: What are your activities in the Hürkuş Programme? Could you please inform us about the sub systems that you can provide for this program?
Mr. Serdar Çetingül : Honeywell’s Aerospace is committed to working with TAI to provide high performance navigation solutions for the Hürkuş-B Trainer Aircraft. Although I cannot go into specifics today, these products are proven commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) fully qualified equipment that meets TAI’s mission requirements.
Defence Turkey: LHTEC CTS 800- 4A engines were integrated to the Atak Helicopters delivered to Turkish Land Forces. What will be your logistics support within this program?
Mr. Serdar Çetingül : Each Atak helicopter is powered by two LHTEC CTS800-4A turboshaft engines which have a reputation for compactness, light weight, reliability, power and durability.
Ease of operation through improved maintainability has been another important design driver for the CTS800 engine family. The CTS800-4A engine incorporates features to operate with a maintenance philosophy of “on-condition” (i.e. without a fixed Time Between Overhaul), which reduces depot maintenance costs and workload. Time interval inspections are dependent upon operating hours and cycles. However, all direct maintenance actions are managed “on-condition” based on inspection limits as prescribed in the maintenance manuals. The CTS800-4A engine is based on a modular design. All engine Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) can be removed on-wing with the engine installed, allowing easy access the LRUs. The CTS800-4A engine and LRUs do not require rigging or complex adjustments upon engine installation, which means operators benefit from a leaner two-level maintenance policy; Organizational (O) and Depot (D), eliminating the Intermediate (I) level of maintenance completely.
Engines which cannot be rectified in accordance with the Line Maintenance Manual shall be removed from the fleet at Organizational Level and sent to the Depot Level facility for repair. LHTEC is currently evaluating the transfer of Depot Level Maintenance (DLM) capability to either TLF or TEI, as directed by SSM, subject to establishment of the necessary DLM License agreement with the selected facility.
Defence Turkey: Both the Regional Jet project and the FX/TX program are important programs in Turkey’s agenda. What are your activities in respect to these two programs?
Mr. Serdar Çetingül : It is too early to go into specifics. However, Honeywell’s Aerospace products and services are used globally on virtually every commercial and business aircraft operating today, as well as for a wide range of defence and space applications. We have many years of experience in collaborating with local partners on a wide range of subsystems such as electric power, environmental control, Auxiliary Power Units (APUs), propulsion, flight safety systems, communication and navigation and surveillance systems. We are always looking for opportunities to use this expertise to support new programs in Turkey and around the world where we believe our technologies can make a difference by improving the efficiency, performance, safety and mission success of platforms and operations.
Defence Turkey: Could you please inform us about the other projects that you are carrying out and your cooperation with TAI and other Turkish companies? Is there anything else you wish to mention?
Mr. Orhan Geniş : Our core focus is to partner with Turkey to help achieve its objective of building a more indigenous and self-sufficient defence industry, for both the home market as well as for export. Honeywell regards Turkey as one of its key strategic countries. It is our intention to continue expanding our in-country partnerships within Aerospace, contributing to Turkey’s goals in this sector.
We remain committed to working with Turkish industry, including our partners TAI with whom we work closely on the T129 Atak, to define and produce the most technically capable, safest, cost effective, lowest risk, and lowest lifecycle cost solutions available. We have been very successful already in establishing a local presence in fast growth countries all over the world, so by combining this with a heritage of developing aerospace technologies that dates back over a century, we are in a fortunate position of being able to offer a complete solution to most defence requirements.
To help it achieve its objectives of building an indigenous defence industry, Turkey is looking for partners that can transfer the right knowledge and skill sets to help empower the local workforce. Additionally it has a growing desire to optimize its fleets performance by reducing grounding time, increasing operational efficiency and extending the overall lifecycle of its aircraft. This is why we see strong demand for retrofit and upgrade technologies and Performance-Based Logistics (PBL) services in the market today. And finally it is of course looking for the best engineering in the industry, to ensure its fleets compete effectively in the modern battlefield. There are very few companies beyond Honeywell that have the breadth of portfolio to be able to deliver against all of these requirements simultaneously and this is why Turkey’s defence sector is such an exciting place for us to be at this time.
