Nine locally made T129B Atak model have been ordered by the Turkish police. It is a locally manufactured aircraft based on the Italian Leonardo’s A129 Mangusta, which Turkey flew for the first time in 2019, within a military design program.
It is probably the first police organization of its kind to have such equipment in the world. Specifically, it is the Phase 2 variant of the T129 Atak, which entails different improvements with respect to the first helicopters of this type that the country has manufactured. Among other advances, the new version is capable of loading more weapons and new systems, electronic warfare, among others, thanks to the increase in its payload.
The delivery of the first T129 Atak helicopter to the Turkish police was confirmed by the country’s interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, when he picked it up on the social network Twitter last February.
The A.129B will be armed with a 20-millimeter cannon and different types of rockets, both guided and unguided, will be limited to anti-terrorist operations. In these scenarios, it will be able to act together with aircraft from both the Army and the Gendarmerie, within the “change in the concept of mission”, as quoted by the Turkish government news agency Anadolu.