The ALKA Directed Energy Weapon System, known as the "laser weapon" developed by the Turkish defense industry, continues to advance with new capabilities for security forces.
Koray Dayanç, Director of Weapon Systems and Integration at ROKETSAN, told AA that they began developing directed energy weapon technology against drone threats to protect critical infrastructures and facilities in 2018-2019.
Dayanç stated that they won a competition organized by the Presidency of Defense Industries, competing with ASELSAN and TÜBİTAK Bilgem, by offering a solution that successfully destroyed a single drone, leading to the birth of the ALKA system and the start of its deliveries.
He mentioned that they initially aimed to protect critical facilities domestically and later developed the system to protect operational units against dense swarm kamikaze drone threats.
"After starting with the first system at 2.5 kilowatts, we have now scaled up to 5 kilowatts and 10 kilowatts. The speed and types of drone threats have increased today.
They have transitioned from electronically radio-controlled units to wired types and have become robust against soft-kill style electronic jamming. ALKA continues to exist in the system, gaining the ability to perform both soft-kill and hard-kill operations.
Our 10-kilowatt system is currently operational and has been integrated into the inventory, continuously being developed further since threats are accelerating every day. Therefore, we've updated our radar to reduce detection and identification times, and we are working on transitioning to newer radar technologies to detect more targets."
