Turkey might be interested, for use against Kurd guerrilas in western Kurdistan :p .
I recall they have lost quite a few helicopters and regular fighters do not seem to have enoufh endurance and accuracy for this sort of warfare. Still, they are heavily investing in their new “local” attack helicopter, so it will probably not allow for extra funds for virtually the same purpose.

Other than that, Iraq or Afghanistan might be interested for the same purpose, but it’s highly doubtfull, especially for Iraq.

I can think of no other country who might show interest for these 40 year old cold war relics. Everyone else can do with attack helicopters.

Turkey was offered 40 A-10A’s in 1993 and procurement procedures were initiated. They were to be deployed at 8th Main Jet Base in Diyarbakir (some sources say a squadron in Diyarbakir and a squadron in Balikesir or Bandirma).

But then came the catastrophic 1994 economic crisis, which made it impossible to allocate enough funds for infrastructure and operational costs.

By the way, regular conscripts are not being deployed to frontline operations for a long time.

Turkey has lost 2 x AH-1W, one AS-532, one or two S-70A’s to PKK ground fire since the armed conflict began in 1984. One of the AH-1W’s and the AS-532 to SA-7 in mid 1990’s, the other AH-1W to RPG fire during Operation Sun in Northern Iraq in 2008 .

What I would like to know is if Turkey and ROK worked together to build an attack helo based on the T-129, could Korea get the rights to build and export them? And if so, what role would Agusta have in all of this?

Currently, TAI owns all the marketing rights of the T129. So, if a new attack helicopter based on T129 is designed (say, K129) than I pretty much think that it is possible for them to get a license for exporting. That would make this helicopter the “grandson” of A129 in some strange way 😛

@EagleSpirit,

I was about write a reply but apparently Hotdog was quicker:

well what he means is K1 is nothing more than an Abrams Jr. it relied heavily on GD’s input and advice.. just like how the T-50 is a Baby Viper.. Lockheed had a heavy role in it.

K2 on the other hand, not sure.

It turned out during Altay project that South Koreans simply do not have very cutting edge technology or know how in modern MBT design & development. We even had to do extensive R&D in some areas that S. Koreans promised tech + know how transfer!

I do not see the Koreans willing to adopt the T-129. Korea is willing to sell weapons to Turkey and teach them technologies to build their own things.. but it does not work the other way around. Its partially cultural as they see anything that’s not American or Western European, as inferior.

Based on the experiences fron Altay main battle tank and KT-1T trainer aircraft projects, I don’t see much future for that trend…

China at one stage wanted to buy a very small amount of Rooivalks. Denel was suspicious that a reverse engineering project would be the end result.

The Rooivalk was a very good, tough helicopter that has been hamstrung by industrial and political moves. It was rated highly by the RAF, but the US refused to integrate Hellfire onto the platform. This resulted in a tit-for-tat exclusion of US weapons in SA’s arms purchase a while later.

Eurocopter put out pressure in the Australian and Turkish programmes about not supporting the engines on the Rooivalk, which are French.

A helicopter that scored highly, and should have done better, but for the political angle.

Rooivalk scored better than the A129 after technical evaluations and test flights in Turkish competition (ATAK II – ATAK I was the cancelled project which Bell AH-1Z King Cobra was the winner). However, there were there main reasons for Turkey’s selection of Mangusta:

1. Denel’s stability was questionable: The financial status of the company and ability to provide technical and logistics support for a very long time was not promising.

2. Extreme increase in price just before the final selection. Even Turkish officials openly admitted this as a phenomena.

3. French intervention. They told they ould not support the engine. This was the last nail to the coffin.

Rooivalk was indeed a good selection for the Turkish army and would also act as a stepping stone for further defence industry partnership programs.

Seeing that drawing of the Navalised YF-23 brought tears of sorrow to my eyes on the fate of that beautiful aircraft. Darn Raptor!

According the Defencenet.gr, Eurofighter is closing down the Athens office, thus marking an end (for now) to a long running saga of HAF vs. EF-2000: http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=30076&Itemid=49