TUAF RESPONSE TO USG POINTS ON SATELLITE REMOTE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 005005 SIPDIS STATE PLEASE PASS TO NP/ECNP AND EUR/SE E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/03/2014 TAGS: MASS MARR PINR TSPA ETTC PARM IS KS FR TU UK SUBJECT: TUAF RESPONSE TO USG POINTS ON SATELLITE REMOTE SENSING COOPERATION QUESTIONNAIRE REF: A. STATE 186962 ¶B. ANKARA 4440 Classified By: PolMilCouns Timothy A. Betts for reasons 1.4 (B) and (D) . ¶1. (SBU) On September 1, Deputy PolMilCouns delivered Ref. A talking points to the MFA's Americas Desk and the Turkish Air Force (TUAF) Aerospace Division. The MFA's Americas Desk Deputy Director professed to be unaware of the TUAF questionnaire and accepted the points without comment. While promising to share our position with the appropriate MFA officials, she referred Deputy PolMilCouns to TUAF for specific action. ¶2. (C) Embassy's TUAF counterpart on aerospace issues, Col. Goker, was recently replaced as a result of the annual August TGS promotion and reassignment process. His successor, Colonel Dingersu, claimed to be unfamiliar with the questionnaire and referred us to the specific project manager. (Note: This is a change. Goker handled all communication with the Embassy.) Possibly due to the staff turnover and unfamiliarity with the topic, the TUAF rebuffed our request for a meeting and submitted the written response provided below. ¶3. (U) In its response TUAF offered a few additional details on the proposed sensing capabilities and commercialization plans, and acknowledged TUAF willingness to meet with USG counterparts later in the year. However, any meeting would be predicated on prior receipt of our responses to the questionnaire contained in Ref. B. ¶4. (U) Begin Text of TUAF Response: RESPONSE TO US EMBASSY'S QUESTIONS REGARDING QUESTIONNAIRE OF TuAF Q1. What remote sensing capabilities are envisioned, i.e. spacecraft size, imaging instruments and resolutions, intended applications, and space and ground-based systems operations? A1. Turkish Armed Forces considers developing a space-based system to improve her capability in the field of image intelligence. The system will comprise of space and ground segments. Space segment includes the spacecraft placed at an altitude that is optimized for conventional sun-synchronous orbits and the launch services to place it in this orbit. Imaging Instrument and Resolution: The imaging instrument of spacecraft is suggested to be an electro-optical (E/O) camera system that provides sub-meter resolution panchromatic and multi-spectral imagery in 4-5 bands (i.e. Red, Green, Blue, Near IR). Spacecraft Size: Spacecraft size is not assumed as a critical design parameter. Turkish Armed Forces focuses on obtaining high accuracy, while minimizing system weight and power consumption. On the other hand the main consideration is the resolution that is designated to be better than 1 m. and with resolution, intended applications will set the size requirement. Space and Ground-Based Operations: The ground segment will perform telemetry, telecommand and control of spacecraft, tasking, image reception and processing. The ground segment is also considered to be expandable to download images from determined commercial imaging satellites. Another consideration of TuAF regarding the space-based imaging capability is the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). TuAF is interested in a SAR system with resolution in the order of the E/O system for all weather day and night image intelligence. Q.2 Does your government anticipate commercializing its systems' data and, if so, how such commercialization would take place? A2. The whole system basically will serve military and government users. But the excessive capacity is planned to be commercialized. The commercialization is intended to take place via a commercial company on the basis of selling imaging minutes not the image itself. Note: Turkish Armed Forces apprehends the "Cooperation" as a co-development program, not as a procurement program. In other words both countries are suggested to have cooperative minds as partners and share the risks such as export license, design change, path finding, etc., which are inherent in space development program and come from state-of-the-art technology development. At first TuAF aims to get the US authorities' general impressions about developing a cooperation program including technology and know-how transfer to Turkey in pre-determined technology areas, localization of sub-system level items in the field of high resolution imaging satellite. Then we will have an internal evaluation process that will clarify the further step. We would like to receive a response to the questionnaire as soon as possible so as to be able to make arrangements for a meeting in Ankara as you proposed. End Text of Response. EDELMAN