Aselsan developing UMVs performing in droves

Selçuk Böke - ANKARA

Türkiye’s leading defense company Aselsan has progressed to the third phase of the project in which it is developing unmanned maritime vehicles (UMV), eight of which can perform missions in droves.

“We continue to develop high autonomy unmanned maritime vehicles and expand our UMV family. In the third phase of the project, we implemented the ‘eight-herd’ architecture,” said Defense Industries Presidency (SSB) head İsmail Demir.

The vehicle, named Albatros-S, shares sub-tasks and is divided into sub-flocks. It has basic capabilities such as search and rescue, wide area scanning and detection, escort, engagement with suspicious vehicles and being able to operate in situations where the use of manned systems is risky.

ALBATROS-S, developed by Aselsan, can cruise and function in a herd formation independent of a central control, capable of cruising without the need for user intervention, with a high level of autonomy.

Having features such as expandable swarm architecture and dynamic route planning, it can also take on tasks such as reconnaissance, surveillance, engagement with a single or multi-boat target, coast guard patrol, and base and port defense.

“Our goal is to be a pioneer in UMVs as well as in UAVs,” Demir said.

Aselsan ranked 56th in the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) 2021 list, down from 53rd in the previous year’s list. The Turkish Armed Forces Foundation owns 74.2 percent of shares in the company, while 25.8 percent is traded on Borsa Istanbul.

Aselsan’s arms sales stood at $2.16 billion last year, declining slightly from $2.2 billion in 2020. Total sales of the defense company were $2.28 billion, and arms sales accounted for 95 percent of the company’s total sales.

In the first nine months of 2022, Aselsan inked $924 million worth of new contracts, while backlog was $7.6 billion. The company’s nine-month revenues reached 17.7 billion Turkish Liras ($950 million), rising 72 percent from a year ago.