The progress of the 6-barreled 20 mm gun system, which will add power to the National Combat Aircraft KAAN, will be revealed in SAHA 2026. SAHA 2026 International Defense, Aerospace Industry Fair, organized by SAHA Istanbul, Turkey’s and Europe’s largest defense, aviation and space industry cluster, will be held at Istanbul Expo Center on 5-9 May. TR Mekatronik, which set out to produce multi-barreled cannons nationally and introduced the 3-barreled cannon, will introduce its products and capabilities at SAHA 2026.
The company will also bring the 6-barreled gun, which is currently undergoing testing, to the fair. The 6-barreled 20 mm gun system, one of the most important new products to be exhibited at the fair, is developed entirely with domestic resources, from design to production, and components that will not create export restrictions are preferred, even on the electronic equipment side. In this way, a localization rate of over 95 percent is achieved throughout the system.
The system is one of the most concrete indicators of the engineering level TR Mekatronik has reached in the field of medium-caliber weapon systems. The 6-barrel 20 mm gun system was built on the knowledge and experience of the 3-barrel system. TR Mekatronik General Manager Fatih Çevik, in his statement to the AA correspondent, said that it was decided to establish the company in 2018 and it started operating in 2019.
Explaining that the company, which was established with the equal partnership of Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAŞ) and Sarsılmaz, has been working to locally and nationally design and produce the nose cannon, which is one of the restrictions in the export of ATAK helicopters, in line with its founding purpose, Çevik said: “The project design, production, testing and deliveries of all the electromechanics and control units of the 3-barrel system, which we call the initial project of our company, continued until the beginning of 2024.
It continues as mass production after 2024. We currently have 10 ATAK helicopters, some of which are abroad. I hope we will have our systems in all ATAK helicopters produced from now on. This is an important success. Of course, we had an example, but one example is not enough to produce all of them. We encountered many things and obstacles in this sector. We overcame all of them with our engineering power and completed the project with very successful tests.
“I can say that it is the first medium-caliber original design system in Turkey that is fully qualified.” Stating that the 3-barreled cannon can be considered as a base weapon, and that they started working on a 6-barreled and higher pulse version that has more added value and can be used on different platforms, Çevik gave the following information: “With our 6-barrel version, we have started to work on a version that can be installed on the air platform with 2 thousand shots per minute.
We have such a target platform. We continue our work to be used in 3 thousand shots per minute air defense systems. We have completed our preliminary tests here too. We have shown that we can easily pass or have passed many tests that we have built on a qualified base system, with the things we have done in the past. These continue. “Hopefully soon, our weapon will be in the sky with its platform and we will show everyone our capabilities in terms of air defense.” Fatih Çevik stated that they have a contract with TAI for the 6-barreled gun and said, “We are developing this system for the KAAN aircraft.
Apart from that, we are trying to see if we can install alternatives on different platforms produced in Turkey. Some of them are still in the early stages, but we have a contract for KAAN and we continue to work.” he said. Source: AA
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