The curve of the business of the Turkish defence electronic champion, Aselsan, is marking a steep increase in terms of revenues and order book, as well as of production capacity. What is being reduced is delivery time and, when possible, cost, to cope with the increased demand by national and export customers, the latter closing to the 100 nations mark. Air defence, including of course C-UAS, and electronic warfare, are the two leading sectors, considering how much the third dimension has become key in current conflicts
One year after our previous visit EDR On-Line was invited back to Aselsan’s Gölbaşı Campus, which allowed us to get the latest on the company evolution. First of all, Aselsan’s headquarters have moved from the Macunköy premises, downtown Ankara, to Gölbaşı, which hosts the Radar and Electronic Warfare Division as well as the Integrated Defence System Technologies Division, two of the six divisions the remaining four being Communication and Information Technologies, Micro Electronics and Electro-Optics, Avionics and Guidance Systems Technologies, and Transportation, Security, Energy and Healthcare.
In one year, the Turkish defence electronics champion bagged four new export customers, reaching a total of 97, very close to the 100-target mentioned last year by Ahmet Akyol, the Aselsan President and CEO. The ongoing arms race led to a 29% increase, this becoming the standard figure in those busy years, with the 2025 revenues increasing at US$ 4.5 billion, more than what expected last year after the first three quarters. Currently 70% of the company is owned by the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation, corporate investors having tripled within the last year, mostly from the US and Europe.
Considering the wide portfolio and the number of items delivered yearly, the company has a relatively limited number of employees, around 14,000, with over 10,000 engineers (the ten thousandth engineer entered the company in late September 2026) and 4,000 technicians, as its main task is to develop, prototype, qualify and provide customer support, most of the production being outsourced to the over 5,600 subcontractors. Company capacity will be further boosted when the Oğulbey facility will be finished; construction started in August 2025, and when finished it will feature 700,000 m2 of covered area and 8,000,000 m2 of open area, some initial production having already started, EDR On-Line understood, the company being ready to hire 8,000 new employees when the new facility will be finalised. Manpower is constantly increasing, Aselsan having hired 5,600 employees in the last three years with an average age of 28 and has 20,000 candidates in its application database.
Beside the 18 affiliated companies, some of them in the eastern part of the country recently hit by a major earthquake, Aselsan also established some joint ventures with Academia. One of them is AB MikroNano, located in Ankara, founded in 2014 together with Bilkent University, a GaN (gallium nitride) chip foundry, focused on Compound Semiconductor, RF/Wireless on 100mm wafers; it was the first such company in Turkey and the second in Europe, Aselsan representatives explained. This, and other microelectronic entities capable to design chips allow the group to be independent on what are considered key components for many of Aselsan’s products.
As for export, Aselsan has opened offices in 25 different nations in four continents; in some nations, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Croatia it established maintenance centres, while in other, Kazakhstan, Jordan, and Qatar, production centres were created, EDR On-Line understanding that these might also become advanced bases for further exports in their geographical areas.
One of the key parameters in recent times has become time to market, both for new and existing products. In some European countries the need to receive equipment as soon as possible has been the discriminating factor in major contracts, sometimes going against the logic of logistic uniformity. Design to speed has therefore become a mantra at Aselsan, an example being the development of an airborne electronic warfare system providing similar effect to those obtained by the Vural truck-mounted system, which was delivered in six months, a UOR product which became the precursor of today airborne EW airborne pods. Time from contract to deployment, which in the past was around 48 months, has been nearly halved, as it has been decreased to 28 months, Aselsan delivering now an average 27% of an order within the first year from contract.
This is also thanks to the 40% increase in production capacity obtained in the last two years, Aselsan aiming in the coming two years to increase it by 100%, when production at the new Oğulbey will run full steam. Compared to 2025, when the company delivered 286,000 units, 2026 will see Aselsan delivering over 400,000 units, al this being possible also thanks to the US$ 2.7 billion ongoing investment plan, a much-needed move considering that the group backlog has increased from US$ 13 billion in 2024 to 30 billion in 2026.
Not only design to speed but also design to cost; switching to the system on chip technology allowed a 72% saving in multifunction surveillance radars, design change a 46% reduction in IIR seekers and 30% in guidance kits, the development of dual-use systems such as UUVs increase production numbers and therefore decrease cost for customers, as non-recurrent are spread over bigger numbers. Aselsan closely follow material development, new steel alloys allowing in some cases to migrate from tungsten to steel while maintaining performance criteria. Germanium is used in optical coating, however for some items germanium is overqualified, hence on those systems Aselsan is now using zinc sulfide which allows reducing cost. It is to note that Aselsan has its own zinc sulphide production plant as well as its own germanium and sapphire growth facilities, which ensure maximum freedom when dealing with strictly export controlled materials.
The company increased its mechanical production capacity by 54% and the assembly capacity by 23%, however in the overall production increase the supply chain plays a key role; in 2025 Aselsan filed US$ 5 billion in orders to its suppliers, more than the company revenue, a clear sign of numbers expected in the coming years. Not only, should a start-up come up with a subsystem or component capable to replace similar systems currently acquired on the international market, Aselsan would support that development, around USD 150 million being invested each year in such operations. Aselsan set up a portal dedicated to subcontractors, where it expresses its needs to its supply chain ecosystem. Beside usual business, this portal also allows rapid reaction to unexpected events, such as an embargo that hits a specific component or subsystem. In fact, embargoes have allowed Aselsan, and the other Turkish defence industry ecosystem, to become increasingly independent from foreign suppliers, most products being now ITAR-free, while the national contribution to the Turkish defence procurement has increased from 20% in the year 2000 to the current 80%. Over 1,000 critical systems were developed locally, by the company itself or by its supply chain ecosystem, including strictly export-controlled gallium nitrate power amplifiers, which allowed overall to keep US$ 1 billion inside Turkey.
Among products produced by the Turkish electronic defence champion, those related to air defence and C-UAS are certainly best sellers; the need to reduce cost-to-kill ration when dealing with the drone threat let to a revival of AAA (Anti-Aircraft Artillery), the Korkut 35 being the typical example, with its ATOM airburst munition. It remains however a quite expensive system, both in terms of platform as well as for the system itself. This does not mean that it is not appreciated: “Middle East countries are calling every day and are requesting for Korkut 35 in very short delivery time. But we a consistent contract with Turkey, which has it already in service. To cope with new demands, within next year we will be delivering Korkut 35 in less than 12 months. Our CEO always says that we can deliver any system in less than 24 months, for Korkut 35 it will be less than one year,” a company source told us.
Aiming at providing its customers with a more affordable solution, the Korkut 25, unveiled at SAHA Expo 2024, which 25 mm cannon fires time-fused pre-fragmented explosive rounds, the initial investment for a 25 mm Korkut compared to a 35 mm one being 15 times less according to Aselsan, the cost of each engagement being also less, the aim being a cost-to-kill less than one third the value of the incoming system. Korkut 25 was entirely developed on company funds: “Yearly 7% of our revenues go to internal research and development,” a company source told EDR On-Line. The group has 11 R&D centres and several incubation centres; it also works with Tecnoparks, it works closely with around 50 Turkish universities, seven of them hosting ASELABS, the three most recent being those established at the Middle East Technical University, Istanbul Technical University and Hacettepe University.
In the electronic warfare domain Aselsan is upgrading its jammers, extending the band up to 8 GHz; lessons from the Ukrainian battlefield have shown that Russia is not respecting the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) rules, and is for example using the 6.3 GHz frequency, which is not allowed for military purposes. Not only, all Aselsan jammers have now become reactive jammers, selectively disturbing the frequencies used by the opponent. It is to note that within the Turkish military organisation we find an Electronic Warfare Command at joint level, each service having its own EW Command, the EW domain being considered a top priority at MoD level in Ankara, all EW operations being manageable from the Turkish capital through a dedicated system known as EHKOM (Elektronik Harp KOMuta kontrol sistemi, Electronic Warfare Command and Control System). “The top priority given to EW led us to integrate a VHF jammer in a Baykar Anka UAV in 20 days,” a company source told EDR On-Line.
EW is also integral to the Steel Dome, the layered air defence system developed by Aselsan; according to the company using a COMINT sensor it is possible to detect a stealth fighter at hundreds of kilometres, depending of course on flight altitude. On the defensive side Aselsan launched this year its Koral Air Defense which is designed to jam AESA radars of enemy attacking aircraft, a system developed on request of East European countries that need to defeat the first wave of an eventual attack by Russian aircraft. Again, this system was developed on company funds, the management considering it has a potential on the export market. And as a defensive system, it can easily be integrated into the Steel Dome.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is obviously becoming standard in most Aselsan products. Dealing with classified information Aselsan, as many other defence industries, cannot refer to open models available on the Internet. The company is building the largest computing centre in Turkey to build an internal AI closed network. Beside introducing AI-based algorithms into its products, Aselsan is using AI also in its processes, something that considering only 2025 allows saving 730,000 working hours, the yearly equivalent of the work of 400 engineers.
We could witness the use of many of the systems developed by Aselsan in recent years by the Turkish Land Forces during exercise “Atiş Serbest” the day before our visit to Aselsan’s Gölbaşı Campus
Photos by P. Valpolini
