March 15, 2025: In early 2025 Turkey put two more locally made 3,000 frigates into service. Turkish shipyards are building another 29 ships, including the first locally built submarines. When the new fleet is completed, it will consist of 209 ships. With a fleet this large, Turkish naval forces will dominate the Mediterranean, Black Sea, and some adjacent waters. Until recently, the navy obtained its ships from foreign suppliers like the U.S., Germany and other European shipbuilders.

Currently Turkey has the fifth largest ship building industry in the world. Turkish yards mainly produce commercial ships. Nearly twenty years ago, when the government decided to expand the fleet, there were a growing number of local shipyards available to do the work. Now there are 77 shipyards, three of them specializing in military construction as well as repairing and upgrading existing ships from countries throughout the region. Turkey has done the same thing with military aircraft, with hundreds of combat aircraft, especially F-16s, being repaired or upgraded at Turkish facilities.

Even before the Cold War ended in 1991, Turkey was seeking to become self-reliant in arms production. Turkey has even designed a fighter bomber, the twin engine, 27 ton Kaan. The engines are American, but everything else, including the bombs and missiles carried, are made in Turkey. Kaan took its first flight a year ago and mass production is to begin in the 2030s.

Meanwhile, there are so many local weapons producers that there is often competition from two or more Turkish manufacturers to supply something for local air, ground or naval forces. For example, Tubitak SAGE, a Turkish government defense research institute. has been trying to compete with Roketsan Corporation by announcing that its Bozok lightweight laser-guided missile was finally entering production. There was a similar announcement back in 2014, that was soon canceled when it was realized that the rival Mam-L was a success when carried by the then-new TB2 drone. The 2022 Bozok missile has a greater range of 15 kilometers and is smaller than the Mam-L.

SAGE was founded half a century ago to develop ballistic and other types of missiles. Fifteen years after SAGE was created, the government decided to try the market approach and took the lead in establishing Roketsan, which was a much more productive and innovative operation than SAGE. During its first two decades Roketsan concentrated on developing and producing Turkish versions of most of the weapons and munitions Turkey had to import. This was done without stealing patented tech from other nations, as Russia and China have long done. Turkey wanted Roketsan to be able to freely export its munitions, especially the innovative or less-expensive ones. The next phase was to do the same with more complex systems like guided and ballistic missiles. Bayraktar, another Turkish company, did the same thing with drones that Roketsan had done with munitions.

Early Turkish efforts to develop effective and affordable drones using government institutes and companies ran into problems. This gave Bayraktar, an entrepreneurial company, an opportunity to fill the government's need for drones and in 2014 it introduced the affordable and successful TB2 drone. Similar to successful Israeli and American drones, Roketsan already had suitable missiles and guided bombs for the TB2. The most used weapon was the Mam-L laser guided missile. This was a lightweight version of the American Hellfire missile that had been around since the 1980s and non-American versions could be developed using a lot of off-the-shelf technology. Roketsan had done this with its Mam-L missile that weighed half as much as Hellfire but had similar range of 8 kilometers and laser guided accuracy. The 25 kg Mam-L is an unpowered version of the larger 37.5 kg UMTAS rocket-powered laser-guided missile. Both have a range of eight kilometers but the Mam-L glides to the target and its range is less if the drone is at a low altitude. UMTAS is much faster and has a fire and forget feature where, once the drone laser designator identifies the target, the UMTAS will home in on it while the drone seeks other targets. Mam-L is used against smaller, unarmored and stationary targets. UMTAS is described as an anti-tank missile and effective against tanks whereas the Man-I will usually only damage a tank. Most of the targets Turkish drones attacked were troops in the open, bunkers, buildings, or unarmored vehicles. In this respect MAM-L excelled and thousands of them have been successfully used.

Mam-L was light enough for smaller drones like the TB2 to carry two of them. Mam-L and the larger UMTAS are the principal weapons of Turkish armed drones and are used regularly against PKK separatists in Turkey and Syrian forces and rebel groups in Syria. Mam-L and UMTAS are available to all customers for Turkish drones large enough to carry them and a growing number of countries, including Ukraine and Poland, have bought them. Ukrainian TB2s have been particularly effective, making the TB2 and Mam-L even more attractive to export customers.

Which brings us back to the SAGE effort to develop and sell Bozok, a competitor to the Mam-L. One reason for that is the two other Mam missiles now available. One is the 6.5 kg 70mm Mam-C, which is based on the American World War II vintage 2.8-inch unguided rocket. This weapon is still in use but for over twenty years developers in many nations have added laser guidance to the 70mm rocket. Then there is the 94 kg Mam-T that can be used on drones as well as helicopters and jet fighters. Mam-T has a range of 30-80 kilometers depending how high and fast the launching aircraft is. Mam-T uses both laser and GPS guidance.