The unmanned land vehicle BARKAN, developed within the Turkish defense industry, joined the inventory of the security forces.
HAVELSAN, which has been serving the security forces for many years with its training platforms and software solutions, has brought its first products to the inventory with BARKAN in terms of operational platform. In this context, BARKAN I and BARKAN II were made available to the security forces.
In his statement to the AA correspondent, HAVELSAN Product Development and Production Director Veysel Ataoğlu said that they started to work on robotic and autonomous systems with the BARKAN I vehicle and that they have been conducting field test activities for about 1.5 – 2 years. Ataoğlu stated that they created the BARKAN II vehicle by reflecting the user feedback to the platform in this process, and this vehicle had higher mobility, almost doubled its weight, could carry some heavy class weapons, and carried out tests with the 12.7-millimeter weapon system. Ataoğlu noted that these payloads will be further differentiated and that they will conduct tests of 40-millimeter grenade launchers, METE missiles and different types of missiles.
Stating that BARKAN II has entered the inventory, Ataoğlu said, “In the near future, the security forces will be testing it in the region and again in different types of geographies within itself and we will follow them closely. If there are different data, our development activities will continue at this point.”
Explaining that they exhibited these vehicles in different fairs abroad and met with decision makers, Ataoğlu stated that they would hold various meetings in this direction within the scope of IDEF and that they were carrying out intensive work for export under the coordination of the Presidency of Defense Industries.