What is known about the production of Turkish tank engines by BATU?

Last year, the first locally developed tank engine was successfully launched in Turkey. The BATU diesel unit, with a capacity of 1500 horsepower, is designed for armored vehicles - primarily the Turkish Altay tank. This was announced on Wednesday by the head of the Defense Industry Directorate (SSB) of Turkey, Ismail Demir.

Demir posted a video of the engine's first run on his Twitter page. This step completes one of the stages of testing BATU, which started in April. It is planned that the 12-cylinder V-shaped water-cooled diesel engine develops an output of 1500 hp. with., and a torque of 4600 Nm. During engine tests, a tank with a new engine should travel up to 10,000 km, and the final integration of BATU into Altay may be completed as early as 2024, the SSB engine and transmission department noted.

Recall that in March it became known that BMC entered into an agreement with South Korean companies Doosan Infracore and S&T Dynamics, which supply engines and transmissions for the Korean MBT K2. This will provide the first batches of the Altay tank with a power plant - until the BATU is ready for serial production. This made it possible to solve the main obstacles in the Altay project.

So, initially the tank was supposed to receive a 1500-horsepower power unit from MTU Friedrichshafen, which is also used in Leopard 2. But later, the German side imposed an embargo on the supply of defense products to Turkey, which left Altay without a motor.

The Altay tank was the result of work on the "National Tank Program of Turkey", initiated in the mid-1990s. Already in 2007, the MBT project was presented, and at the IDEF-2011 exhibition, the first prototype of the tank was shown. The vehicle is a classic western concept tank with combined armor, impressive dimensions, and manual loading of the gun. Remarkably, the 60-ton tank received a 120-mm MKEK120 smoothbore gun, which is a licensed copy of the German Rheinmetall Rh-120 gun. Also, Turkish developments are adjacent to Korean technologies that were used in the development of the K2 tank. All this makes Altay dependent on political decisions.