Turkey tests Albatros-S kamikaze boat, target drowns in a few minutes (video)
The Turkish defense industry has shown an interesting approach not only to the creation but also to the testing of its development
In the Turkish city of Mersin, a successful test of the Albatros-S kamikaze maritime drone developed by ASELSAN took place. In particular, as part of these tests, one Albatros-S was able to sink a target ship with a 69-meter-long hull, which sank just a few minutes after being hit. At the same time, the remnants of all combustible materials were removed from this vessel before the tests began, allegedly out of “concern for the environment.”
A Bayraktar TB2 was used to observe the Albatros-S kamikaze boat hitting the target. The format of using a swarm of eight Albatros-S units at once was also practiced. This is stated in the publication of the SavunmaSanayiST portal.
Defense Express adds that this is, in fact, the first known project of Turkish kamikaze boats that has been brought to the stage of implementation “in metal” and successfully passed the test.
As we can understand from the publications of the same SavunmaSanayiST, the Albatros-S kamikaze boat project could have used an existing model of a multipurpose marine drone of the same name, the existence of which was known in June 2022.
This suggests that it probably took the designers and engineers of the Turkish ASELSAN a little more than 1 year to “convert” the multi-purpose boat into a kamikaze version and work out all the technological nuances associated with the swarming format. However, we should not rule out that the actual timeframe for the work was much shorter.
It should also be emphasized here that the Albatros-S project is by no means the only one on kamikaze boats being carried out by the Turkish defense industry.
As previously reported by Defense Express, in July 2023, during the IDEF 2023 exhibition, the Turkish defense company METEKSAN showed its kamikaze marine drone called ULAQ KAMA.
It was created as a development of previous developments on the topic of unmanned boats of the ULAQ family. At the same time, it was claimed that in 1 year the company would be ready to produce 100 units of such marine drones.
