Three Turkish shipyards have cut steel for a trio of next-generation defense projects: a new carrier, an air defense destroyer and a new attack submarine.
The star player is the Turkish Navy's new National Aircraft Carrier (MUGEM) project. This will be Turkey's largest carrier ever, displacing 60,000 tonnes and measuring about 935 feet in length.
Istanbul Naval Shipyard's MUGEM design is a ski-jump carrier, and (for now) it lacks catapults for assisted takeoff. This reduces complexity and cost, but imposes a steep reduction in maximum takeoff weight. The weight penalty may favor smaller, lighter drone fighters - like the Bayraktar Kizilelma (Red Apple), an unmanned combat aerial vehicle designed for carrier aviation. The Kizilelma is one-fifth the size of the U.S. Navy's F/A-18 Super Hornet by weight, and carries a fraction of the Hornet's payload, but the Turkish drone fighter will still deliver 1.5 tonnes of ordnance out to about 500 miles.
The attack sub project - the National Submarine, or MILDEN - is now under way at Golcuk Naval Shipyard. Few details of this sensitive program have been released, but the sub will displace about 2,700 tonnes and will have air-independent propulsion, according to the Turkish Navy. The Golcuk yard has experience: it also holds a contract to build six German-designed Type 214 subs under license, with air-independent propulsion equipment from ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. The first of these smaller 2,000-tonne subs entered service last year, and all should be delivered by the end of the decade.
The last program that cut steel last week is Istanbul Naval Shipyard's TF-2000, a new destroyer design displacing 8,300 tonnes. It will have nearly 100 vertical launch cells, most of which will be allocated to its primary role: air defense for a carrier or an amphibious assault ship. With combined diesel or gas propulsion, it will have a 26-knot top speed - enough to escort the MUGEM.
Taken together with other modernization programs, these three newbuilding projects will give the Turkish Navy a regional-scale carrier strike group, equipped with modern surface and subsurface escorts - and attritable fighter drones.
