Turkey's ASELSAN & Safine Shipyard Start Production of New Naval Drones

Turkish firms Aselsan and Safine Shipyard started the construction of two new naval drones – an Unmanned Anti-Submarine Warfare boat and an Unmanned Surface Vehicle - on Thursday.

Both vessels are capable of reaching speeds of 40 knots and have a range of 600 nautical miles. These boats have an endurance of about four days without the need for resupply. Aside of surface warfare, these naval drones can be deployed for electronic warfare, underwater warfare and mine warfare operations.

The vessels are equipped with ROKETSAN’s tactical missile system and ASELSAN's stabilized machine gun system STAMP.

The boats can transfer images to desired centers in real time, detect and classify surface elements, and perform autonomous navigation and operations while avoiding fixed and moving obstacles even in cases where communication is lost.

With the autonomy software, it will be able to navigate adaptively according to what it perceives from the sensors on it and will be able to proceed autonomously according to the maritime traffic rules.