Türkiye has ordered 100 expendable unmanned surface vessels (USVs) for kamikaze strike operations, with procurement split among three competing producer teams: Aselsan–Ares Shipyard, STM–Yonca Shipyard, and Havelsan–Sefine Shipyard.
SSIK decision, oversight, and the industrial split
The decision was taken at the February 2026 meeting of the Defence Industry Executive Committee (SSIK), with the Secretariat of Defence Industries (SSB) charged with overseeing the programme. The allocation assigns 40 units to Aselsan, 32 to STM, and 32 to Havelsan — a deliberate distribution designed to create three parallel supply chains rather than concentrate production in a single vendor. The report states this approach is intended to ensure redundancy and maintain competitive pressure across the industrial base. The total number of vessels "may be adjusted slightly" to accommodate an operational doctrine that envisions four-vessel swarms as the basic tactical unit.
Aselsan–Ares: the Tufan and its payload
Aselsan’s entry, developed jointly with Ares Shipyard and unveiled at SAHA 2026 in Istanbul, is named Tufan. The Tufan measures 8 metres long and 1.8 metres wide and carries a high-explosive payload stated as equivalent to one Mk 82 bomb — approximately 227 kg of explosive mass. The vessel is described specifically as being designed to strike surface vessels and coastal installations. Aselsan’s broader display at SAHA 2026 included existing systems such as the Albatros-S swarm USV and Kılıç 100WH and 200WH kamikaze autonomous underwater vehicles, signalling a sustained company push into expendable naval autonomous systems.
STM–Yonca’s Yaktu and the Havelsan–Sefine partnership
STM’s Yaktu, developed with Yonca Shipyard and displayed at the Defence Industry Exhibition, is a smaller, lighter design: 5.8 metres in overall length with a 1.7-tonne displacement. The source describes Yaktu as aimed at an "asymmetric maritime operations" profile ranging from port protection to open-sea strike missions. STM also demonstrated the KARGU autonomous aerial swarm at EFES 2026 in front of 50 national delegations, linking the company’s distributed-control logic across air and surface domains.
The Havelsan entry, developed with Sefine Shipyard, was not described in comparable technical detail in the reporting. The partnership is framed as building on an established naval-autonomy collaboration; Sefine is noted as the yard behind the Marlin SİDA armed USV that the Turkish Navy commissioned in January 2024.
Swarm architecture, communications, and doctrinal framing
Both Tufan and Yaktu are reported to feature compact, low-profile hulls intended to reduce radar and visual detectability. They support line-of-sight and satellite communications for integration into network-centric operations. Their swarm architecture enables cooperative operation: multiple units share data in real time and autonomously allocate tasks during missions. The source explicitly connects this distributed-control logic to STM’s experience with the KARGU aerial swarm.
The procurement is presented as part of a broader Turkish Armed Forces investment in expendable autonomous strike across air, surface, and subsurface domains. At SAHA 2026, Baykar unveiled three new loitering munitions with ranges from 900 km to over 2,000 km, and STM debuted the KUZGUN kamikaze UAV with a 1,000+ km range. The 100-unit USV order is framed as extending this expendable-strike doctrine into the naval surface domain, creating a capability designed to saturate an adversary’s defences with low-cost, high-volume precision-guided threats rather than relying on expensive anti-ship missiles fired from capital ships.
What this means for the Turkish Navy, Turkish defence firms, and regional navies
- The Turkish Navy: The order is described as adding a distributed maritime strike layer that "does not depend on traditional warship launchers or manned aircraft" for anti-surface warfare, augmenting existing platforms such as the TCG Anadolu — described in the source as the world’s first purpose-configured drone carrier — and the 60,000-tonne MUGEM aircraft carrier that is being built.
- Turkish defence firms (Aselsan, STM, Havelsan, their shipyard partners): The three-way split is intended to preserve industrial redundancy and competitive pressure; each team brings distinct form factors and operational profiles (larger, higher-payload Tufan; smaller, lighter Yaktu; and a Havelsan–Sefine entry leveraging prior USV collaboration).
- Regional navies and potential adversaries: The reported design emphasis on low-profile hulls, cooperative swarming, and satellite/line-of-sight networking suggests an operational concept that favours saturation and distributed attrition through numbers and autonomy rather than single high-cost missile shots.
The February SSIK approval and the SSB’s oversight set a clear procurement path, while the allocation across three manufacturers embeds resilience into Türkiye’s supply chain for these systems. The source leaves the technical specifics of the Havelsan–Sefine vessel largely undescribed and notes that the final total may shift as doctrine — specifically the four-vessel swarm concept — is refined. How effectively these USVs are integrated with existing platforms such as TCG Anadolu and the under-construction MUGEM, and how doctrine and force structure change in response, will be the next operational questions the programme must answer.
