The head of the Presidency Turkish of Defence Industries (SSB), Prof. Ismail Demir, was the chief guest of the ceremony and delivered a speech about the importance of such projects.
“We want to become one of the leading countries in the world in the field of unmanned ground vehicles (USV) by bringing our experience and achievements in armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). We have many studies on armed USVs; SANCAR AUSV is one of them. It is critical for us to have AUSVs working in an integrated operational environment to prepare for the operational environment of the future.”
Ismail Demir, Head of SSB
In a press release, SSB highlights SANCAR’s multifunctional mission capabilities to accomplish missions in a less risky and more cost-effective manner.
“The armed USV Sancar, designed to perform unmanned reconnaissance, surveillance, surface combat, and mine countermeasures missions, will minimize this risk with the concept of unmanned use in missions dangerous to humans and allow many tasks to be performed more cost-effectively with the useful cargo.”
SSB press release
SANCAR was developed by Yonca Onuk and Havelsan Partnership. It will feature the HAVELSAN Network Enabled Data Integrated Combat Management System, ADVENT. This is a new generation command and control system designed to meet the needs of a force-oriented, network-centric concept of operations rather than a single ship.
SANCAR is the third USV launched by Turkish defence contractors, following Ares Shipyard-Meteksan’s armed USV ULAQ and Dearsan’s SALVO. Turkey’s Sefine Shipyard is working on the Constellation-class USV, which is also expected to be launched soon.
Specifications of SANCAR
- Length: 12.7 meters
- Displacement: 9 tons
- Max Speed: 40 knots
- Range: More than 400 nautical miles
- Seaworthiness: Sea State 4
- Endurance: 40 hours
- Weapon payload: 12.7 mm remote weapon station (RWS), 2×2 UMTAS or L-UMTAS missiles
- Sensors: Navigational radar, EO sensors and collision avoidance system on a telescopic mast dubbed MILMAST
