LONDON — Turkey electronics company Aselsan will team with Patria of Finland to pitch weaponized armored vehicles to customers in South America, the Middle East and Asia.

The two companies signed a memorandum of agreement during the DSEI exhibit in London this week, agreeing to integrate Aselsan’s family of remote control weapon systems with Patria’s six-wheel and eight-wheel drive armored vehicles for export.

“We’ve come together with Patria for different programs and projects for different corners of the world in the past, and we came together again to better reach to the customer with a complete solution,” said Osman Devrim Fidanci, vice president of business development and marketing at Aselsan. The two companies will share in both sales and marketing of the integrated systems.

Aselsan displayed at DSEI for the first time one its newest offering within the family of remote control weapon systems that could fall within the memorandum of agreement: the NEFER-L stabilized weapon station, which can incorporate either a 25mm or 30mm automatic cannon as the main gun, a 7.62mm machine gun as a coaxial weapon, and an independent electro-optic suite.

RELATED

Also on display was the Patria six-wheel drive vehicle, a successor to the Pasi armored personnel carrier and complement of the Patria eight-wheel drive armored modular vehicle, or AMV.

The multipurpose transport vehicle has a chassis structure based on the same components as the AMV, but with one less axle. The vehicle can be equipped not only with weapon systems, but also various ballistic and mine-protection levels and self-protection systems.

The two companies did not disclose the primary territory for sales included in the memorandum, but Fidanci said South America, the Gulf and Asia were among the target regions.

“We will have a demonstration and hope to get them in the field very soon,” he said of the integrated systems. “The customer will experience this in terms of performance quality metrics. This will be field proven and test driven by the end user.”

Aselsan has exported weapons stations to more than 16 different countries. Beyond that family of offerings, the company announced in August that it landed its first export customer — confirming only that it was a country in Asia — for the recently launched Gokdeniz close-in weapons system. Also this summer, Aselsan won a contract to provide Goz-Mobil thermal cameras to support the Polish Border Guard. It’s the second contract the company received to support the state security agency tasked with patrolling the Polish border.

About Jill Aitoro

Jill Aitoro is editor of Defense News. She is also executive editor of Sightline Media's Business-to-Government group, including Defense News, C4ISRNET, Federal Times and Fifth Domain. She brings over 15 years’ experience in editing and reporting on defense and federal programs, policy, procurement, and technology.

Share:
More In DSEI