One of the names with this memory is Retired Lieutenant General Alpaslan Erdogan. Erdogan's memory of how some successes were built step by step in the process of indigenization and nationalization is very important:
In 2001, I was working as the Director of the Defense Research Branch at the Land Forces Headquarters. Contract negotiations for AH-1Z armed helicopters to be purchased from the USA Bell company was started. When I came from abroad, the Gn.P.P President then said to me, "Colonel, you are also entering into these contract negotiations." Contract negotiations continued with the Americans. There are Bell company representatives, smug Americans, who say they will not let the current configuration of the helicopter to be touched. Within the perspective of Army Aviation of that period, it was desired that the helicopters should be wheeled instead of skids, especially unlike the AH-1P helicopters in our inventory.
The Americans said, "Ours are sled, we don't let anyone touch it". It goes on like this for days. Finally, a first lieutenant approached me, “Commander, if you spare an hour for me, I will tell you something important. The main thing here is the mission computer of this helicopter,” he said. “What is this mission computer?” I said. He said, "We have to make the software for this, sir." “How are we going to do it?” I said. "Commander, let's get involved with the software of this mission computer," he said. He said, "Let's force it, if the Republic of Turkey does it all, we will dominate most things." "Okay, let's bring it up the next day" I said.
We started to bring it up. Americans said "We don't let you touch, We will not open it, we will give it to you like this, we will never mix it up,". At the end of a week there was a lot of progress and they said, "We'll open 95 percent of the software to you." During the coffee break, I said to the head of the delegation, “You give 95 percent, but why not give this 5 percent? What is the criticality here?” “Colonel, can you assure me that this helicopter will not one day be used against the United States? If you can give me this guarantee, I'll give you this 5 percent," he said. This bothered me a lot.
Now Gn. I went to our P.P president. "That's what they say, Commander," I said. “Stop contract negotiations. Bring that first lieutenant to me," he said. We went, our first lieutenant told us. So what are we gonna do? “There is an associate professor lady at TÜBİTAK MAM, she knows these things. Let's invite her." At that time, we had a retired general in the SSB, Celal Pasha, Head of Aviation Department, and we coordinated with him, we held a meeting in the SSB building on Bitişen Sokak. That lady also came and said, "This can happen, give me a week." We met a week later. She prepared a matrix. There are 17 items. Divided by 17. Below were the companies listed. I never forget, she wrote in the first line, "NETAS makes the box of this task computer, AYESAŞ writes here, MAM does that, MİLSOFT does that" etc. Finally he (the commander) says, “We do this.” “What is the cost of this?” we asked. They said, "If you give 80,000 TL, we will work on this job and come."
A project called R&D 2001 was started by SSB. R&D In 2001, that mission computer worked in the laboratory. When the software is done, the ball turns that way, it turns this way. Everything is ok. The R&D 2004 project followed. A helicopter was given to TAI. A consortium called AS-MA-TA was established with the participation of ASELSAN, MAM and TUSAŞ, the system developed in the laboratory was installed in the AH-1S helicopter, and in September 2007, this helicopter went to fire with this mission computer.
We went to Şereflikochisar for shooting. There are foreigners, there are embassies, there are company representatives and there are Irish people among us. "They can't, they can't," they said in the background. “Is that what the girl in the ripped pants wrote, what this guy with the ponytail earrings did?” Such conversations (they had among them). I was very upset. Vecdi Gönül, our then Minister of National Defense, said, "What happened, General, why are you so upset?" “There is a very important team behind. Waiting for failure, they prepared the henna. If we fail, henna will be burned," I said. “Hopefully they will stay,” he said.
The helicopter fired the missile from a distance of four or five kilometers and hit the target in the center. While some of our friends like me cry and hug each other; On the other side, there was a mob saying, "Oh seriously, he hit it".
Well who was that lieutenant? That first lieutenant was Sunar Oktay, who is currently working at TAI. When he retired as a major, he started to work in the helicopter group of TAI with the efforts of the Head of Aviation Department at the time, myself and Muharrem Dörtkaşlı. I don't know his current position. At the urging of that first lieutenant, we got a mission computer. That mission computer is flying over the ATAK helicopters. That mission computer has evolved into other things. We achied that with R&D.
