Bearing Fruits
Global technology leader Honeywell Aerospace has decided to transfer its own TALIN inertial navigation system manufacturing technology to Navcours, a new South Korean defense company which has a capital of 8.2 billion won (US$7.16 million) as of 2015.
TALIN is a core defense article which is exported to 45 countries around the world as well as South Korea. This Honeywell-patented technology enables vehicles and artillery to navigate very precisely, even where GPS satellite guidance is not available, to increase troop safety and maximize mission success. It serves as the brain of the system.
“South Korea is the first country that Honeywell established a partnership and pushed forward a project with a local small and mid-size company. We proceeded the same project in Japan but it was a conglomerate we worked with to transfer the technology,” said Baek Joon-su, manager of the Asia-Pacific region for Honeywell’s aerospace business division, at the Navcours headquarters in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon Metropolitan City, on Feb. 2
The latest decision of Honeywell to transfer the TALIN manufacturing technology to Navcours came after the company signed an offset trade agreement with the Korea Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA). An offset trade is one of common practices of international trade in arms that a country is transferred certain technologies as a benefit in return when the country imports defense articles from a foreign defense companies.
Honeywell will export the TALIN system worth 90 billion won (US$78.53 million) to Hanwha Techwin which produces K9, K K55A1 self-propelled howitzers, and Navcours is the beneficiary of the offset program.
The TALIN inertial navigation system produced by Navcours will be exported to Honeywell's Clearwater plant in Florida of the U.S. The Honeywell headquarters will directly test the system and re-export it to Hanwha Techwin’s Changwon plant, which produces K9 self-propelled howitzer.