Aselsan Gökdeniz CIWS System Will Be Tested On Board TCG Sokullu Mehmet Paşa
TCG Sokullu Mehmet Paşa and her sister TCG Cezarli Hasan Paşa have two 100mm gun turrets. The aft turet on board of TCG Sokullu Mehmet Paşa was removed in 2018. She was used as test ship for the Aselsan made close in weapon system Korkut-D in May 2018.
After the completion of these tests, the Korkut-D mount and the associated hardware was removed from the ship.
Today TCG Sokullu Mehmet Paşa was spotted with a new gun system installed. While the whole gun system and the associated radars and other sensors were under wraps the shape of the system is very distinguishable. The system to be tested is the Gökdeniz close-in weapon system.
Gökdeniz consists of one unmanned gun turret with two 35mm guns, an X band 3-D tracking radar and one fire control radar with electro/optical sensors. All subsystems of the Gökdeniz system are recognizable on board.
The gun turret has been remodelled from her initial version making it suitable to be retrofitted in place of the existing CIWS systems on board. The guns can use the ATOM 35mm airburst ammunition developed by ASELSAN. ATOM is a smart ammunition, having a base fuze increasing the effectiveness of the barreled guns. Thus such ammunition is an important option to fight against small and high-speed targets.
The X band tracking radar has a range of 100km. With its phased array, multi-beam antenna the radar can track multiple air targets simultaneously.
The Gökdeniz close-in weapon system will be installed onboard Barbaros class frigates during their mid-life upgrade, İ class frigates and in the future other ships.
