Turkish Ships To Be Equipped With Home-made Anti-ship Missile In About A Year

Turkey’s ships of the MILGEM (National Ship) project will be equipped with the country’s first indigenously–developed anti-ship missile, the ATMACA, in about year to an year.

“The ATMACA missiles will be seen on Turkish ships in a year or year and a half. With the ATMACA missile, our ships’deterrence will increase significantly,” Emrah Özdemir, Roketsan’s Naval Missile Systems' project manager and team leader, told Anadolu Agency, adding that they were in the phase of conducting qualification studies on the mass production line.

According to Özdemir, the launch of the project led to a decision to build an ATMACA missile with longer-range and a turbojet engine.

Developed by Roketsan, the ATMACA is a modern guided missile that is effective against fixed and moving targets due to its resistance to countermeasures, target update, re-attack, and task cancelation capabilities, and advanced routing system (3D routing).

The missile has a range of up to 250 kilometers and hovers low above the water and can reach the target both on a linear and a vertical plane. With this feature the missile can reach a higher altitude when it gets closer to the target and land on the target ship from right above. The target of the missile can be changed even after the missile's launch while it is highly protected against electronic jamming. The anti-ship missile completed its tests in November 2018.

The MILGEM project was initiated in 2000 to locally design and build a fleet of multipurpose corvettes and frigates that will replace older ships. Works on integrating ATMACA guided missile into the platforms of the Naval Forces inventory are underway, while firing tests are planned to be carried out in the near future.