Turkey has awarded two Israeli companies contracts worth a combined $141 million to provide pod-housed surveillance equipment for its Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters.
Elbit Systems subsidiary Elop will supply long-range oblique photography systems (LOROPS) worth $87 million, and synthetic aperture radar systems valued at $54 million will be provided by Israel Aerospace Industries' Elta Systems subsidiary. Deliveries will be made over four years, with the companies to work as subcontractors to Turkish electronics house Aselsan.
Also dubbed "Condor 2", Elop's LOROPS system is housed within a modified 1,140 litre (300USgal) fuel tank and features electro-optical/infrared cameras for day or night reconnaissance, plus a video processing unit and datalink. Turkey earlier this decade cancelled a $35 million deal to equip its F-16s and McDonnell Douglas F-4s with the design, citing technical issues.
Elta's contract is for 1,140 litre tank-housed versions of its EL/M-2060P SAR sensor, which can cover 50,000km² (19,300 miles²) per hour. This will record and transmit imagery to a ground exploitation station, which industry sources say will also be capable of receiving data from the LOROPS payload.
Source: Flight International
