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