Home EDITORIAL COMMENT Editorial Comment of MSI Magazine Issue 110

Editorial Comment of MSI Magazine Issue 110

by Can Kılınç

Fotoniks’ Laser Communication System Ready for Service

The carried-out product development studies in critical areas, by the technology focused SMEs of the Turkish defence and aerospace industry bear fruit one by one. One such product is the Laser Communication System (LCS) developed by a pioneering technology focused SME, Fotoniks, that became this issue’s cover story.

Cem Yazıcıoğlu, Chairman of the Board of Fotoniks highlighted the fact that they are the first company to work on laser communication systems and that their LCS is the first indigenous solution to be successful in the field tests in its area.

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LCS was developed as an answer to the increased speed and bandwidth requirements of today’s battlefields. The system can reach 1 Gbps full-duplex at a range of 5 km. Sending and receiving 500 high-definition images per second is possible with this speed. LCS draws attention for being easy to transport and install, as well as not being able to be jammed, listened to or detected electronically. With these features, it allows its user to gain new and critical communication capabilities. The system also has the potential to add value to existing communication systems. LCS showed its reliability to potential users after tests held in various parts of Türkiye and the system even proved itself in the field after successful usage in exercises like EFES.

LCS became a reality after intense R&D efforts the company started in 2013, and it is one of the best proofs that technology focused SMEs can go above and beyond delivering what is asked from them to main contractors and that they can run projects in special areas that require efforts for a long time with incremental steps.

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Cem Yazıcıoğlu, Chairman of the Board of Fotoniks

LCS is also important for clearly showing the depth Turkish defence and aerospace industry reached in SMEs level and the possibilities to produce special products at this level.

Anova Removes Hurdles to Exports

Anova, another leading technology focused SME in the industry, left behind critical stages in its productization journey, and is among the guests of Turkish edition of MSI TDR. The company updated its productization strategy 4 years ago and passed the critical phases in the process. It determined 3 strategic areas to focus on in this strategy: environmental conditioning system (ECS), weapon systems that include ammunition flex chute family, and fuel systems. Anova launched indigenous products in these strategic areas and developed new versions of these products, making product families.

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Some of the criteria Anova uses to select products to develop in these strategic areas to add new capabilities to itself, in line with its capabilities, are listed as follows:

  • The product should not already be in development by a Turkish company
  • The product should be an electromechanical one with high added value
  • The product should be hard to procure and have high export potential
  • The product should have a high mass production potential

With this strategy, Anova used subsystems or components procured from abroad in its product development efforts at the beginning. However, embargoes or export restrictions to Türkiye paved the way of Anova and other companies localising these components. As such, the exports of systems that use Anova solutions became more streamlined.

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Anova continues its efforts to both add new members to its product families and launch products in new areas, along with working hard for branding.

Participation Falls for SaSaD’s Performance Report Surveys

Defence and Aerospace Industry Manufacturers Association (SaSaD) is among the most critical organisations since its founding in 1990, and the organisation published 2021 Defence and Aerospace Industry Performance Report on June 5. The report is prepared using the data from the SaSaD member companies responding to the survey, and in its introduction, it is mentioned that 206 manufacturer companies are SaSaD members. However, according to the data, only 81 companies responded to the survey, with a participation rate of 39 percent.

In previous year’s report, SaSaD received data from 85 companies out of 182 members. Attention must be paid to the fact that the number of member companies increased, yet the number of companies responding to the survey fell.

Figure 1. 2021 performance of Turkish defence and aerospace industry.

The glass is half empty and half full regarding to the performance report SaSaD published. Some of the positive points regarding the reports are their uninterrupted publication every year by SaSaD and them being the only such open-source report in the sector, used in analyses regarding the sector. We would like to thank SaSaD for its efforts for this report and similar efforts once more.

On the other hand, this important document brings questions as much as it provides critical data for the sector, with the most important of these questions being: why has the participation rate for the survey been this low?

We also have some evaluations regarding the reliability of the data in the report. The following statement in the 2021 report is striking: “When the sales to domestic industrialists are evaluated as main contractor sales, the sector’s net total domestic sale can be described as $6.322 billion (free from duplication of the sales to the domestic industrialists), total real turnover consisting of net total domestic sales and sales abroad, with a total $8.703 billion.” Using this statement, one cannot determine if the total turnover for the sector is either $10.159 billion or $8.703 billion, casting a shadow of doubt to the other data in the report.

Figure 3. Breakdown of turnover for year 2021 by sectors.

Of course, all the responsibility does not lie with SaSaD. The sector as a whole is responsible, especially the organisations that do not respond to surveys or deliver their data to SaSaD as reliably as possible. As such, a shared responsibility must be the first step to solving this problem.

Sector’s Expansion Does Not Reflect in the SaSaD’s Member Figures

The report says that SaSaD has 206 manufacturer organisations and companies and 6 clusters as its members.

The number of companies in the sector has been increasing quickly, with The Defence and Aerospace Industry Exporters’ Association (SSI) having over 1,000 members, and some clusters having several hundred. However, the member numbers of SaSaD is rather low compared to these, and as such there must be some thoughts spent on why these numbers are low for SaSaD and how much of the sector SaSaD represents.

Figure 4. Breakdown of exports for year 2021 by sectors.

Today, the growth rate of the sector and the increase in the member numbers of SaSaD are not in parallel, and there are hundreds of sector players who are not under SaSaD’s roof. This of course are reflected on the data SaSaD gathers for the reports. With these evaluations, we expect “membership” and its process to be one of the most important subjects in SaSaD’s agenda in the near future.

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Osman Okyay, Chairman of the Board of SaSaD

We can see what kind of challenges await Dr. R. Ruşen Kömürcü who started his duties as the Secretary General of SaSaD on June 1. Dr. Kömürcü was chosen for this position after a meticulous selection process by the Board of Directors of SaSaD, and we wish him success and the best of luck in the journey to make SaSaD one of the leading organisations around the world in its niche. Secretary General of SaSaD started his work quickly, and as he would need a capable team to advance SaSaD to the future, it seems highly likely that an expansion in SaSaD’s personnel will come relatively soon.

We wish to be with you again, dear reader, in our August issue that will include the important developments in July.

Ümit Bayraktar

Executive Editor

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