Türkiye’s defence company Aselsan has signed a $905 million contract with Türkiye’s Defence Industries Secretariat (SSB) for the procurement of air defence systems, the company has said.
Aselsan said on Tuesday that it has signed an agreement covering systems designed to strengthen the country’s air defence capabilities.
The contract is expected to support Türkiye’s Steel Dome programme — a multi-layered air defence architecture developed under the coordination of the SSB as a domestic “system-of-systems” covering all air defence components.
Steel Dome is designed to neutralise aerial threats across all altitudes and ranges.
The system includes multiple layers, ranging from cost-effective low-altitude defence elements against drone swarms and kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicles to systems such as Korkut and Gurz, as well as radars operating at different altitudes.
Hisar systems form the middle layer of the architecture, while Siper is positioned in the upper layer.
Strengthening Steel Dome
Aselsan said Steel Dome brings together several air defence weapon systems, radars, electro-optical solutions, communication modules, command-and-control stations and artificial intelligence capabilities.
The company is also developing Hakim, a higher-level command-and-control solution designed to coordinate the systems within Steel Dome, along with sensor systems and communication solutions.
Aselsan said Türkiye’s air defence capability is being built through the company’s technological know-how accumulated over more than half a century.
Steel Dome, which continues to gain new capabilities, is being strengthened with new components, the company added.
Siper 2 completes firing test
Meanwhile, the new version of the Siper long-range air defence system, Siper 2, completed its latest firing test.
"The distributed architecture-based, long-range regional air and missile defence system Siper 2, which plays a critical role at the strategic level, successfully destroyed a manoeuvring target," Turkish Defence Industries Secretary Haluk Gorgun wrote on the Turkish social media platform NSosyal.
"The Siper 2 system will assume duties at longer ranges and higher altitudes compared to Siper 1, playing an effective role in air and missile defence," Gorgun added.
