Land Systems Missiles & Air Defense Roketsan

Roketsan Signs Deal to Supply ÇAKIR Cruise Missiles to Turkey’s Land Forces

Türkiye’s Presidency of Defence Industries (SSB) and Roketsan signed a procurement contract on October 15 to supply the domestically developed Çakır cruise missile to the Turkish Land Forces Command, moving the weapon from flight trials into army service. SSB President Haluk Görgün and Roketsan General Manager Murat İkinci signed the deal at a ceremony at SSB headquarters in Ankara.

It is the first confirmed order for Çakır from Türkiye’s own armed forces. Roketsan had already flight-tested the missile from aircraft and, as recently as late August, from a mobile ground launcher, but Wednesday’s contract is the first public confirmation that the Land Forces Command itself is buying the system rather than simply hosting trials.

What the contract covers — and what it doesn’t say

SSB and Roketsan did not disclose the contract’s value, the number of missiles involved, or a delivery schedule, which is standard practice for Turkish domestic defence contracts. Görgün described Çakır as giving Türkiye a “deterrent and highly capable cruise missile capability” and credited the Land Forces Command with supporting the programme through its qualification and readiness phases. He said roughly 200 Turkish companies contributed to the project under Roketsan as prime contractor, and singled out the missile’s seeker and its KTJ-1750 turbojet engine — developed with Kale Arge — as indigenous components.

Until Wednesday’s announcement, Çakır’s only disclosed customers were abroad: Indonesia’s ambassador to Ankara, Achmad Rizal Purnama, has said both Qatar and Indonesia have procured the missile, and has pointed to plans for local co-production in Indonesia. Neither government has confirmed quantities or contract terms. The new contract gives Çakır its first domestic buyer on the record.

A missile built to move between services

Roketsan unveiled Çakır in March 2022 as a modular, subsonic cruise missile designed from the outset to launch from more than one type of platform — fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, unmanned combat aircraft, unmanned surface vessels, tactical wheeled vehicles and surface warships. Its first flight test came in May 2023 from a Bayraktar Akıncı UCAV, and Roketsan added a ground-launched mode in trials disclosed in late August 2026, firing two unarmed missiles from a mobile land launcher at land and sea targets.

By Roketsan’s own published figures, Çakır weighs about 275 kilograms without its solid-fuel booster (330 kilograms with it), carries a 70-kilogram warhead available in high-explosive semi-armor-piercing, blast-fragmentation or thermobaric variants, and cruises at high subsonic speed — roughly Mach 0.75 to 0.85 — out to a stated range beyond 150 kilometers. Mid-course guidance blends inertial navigation, anti-jam GNSS, radar and barometric altimeters and terrain-referenced navigation; terminal guidance can use an imaging infrared seeker, a radio-frequency seeker, or a hybrid of the two. A two-way datalink supports in-flight retargeting, strike re-attack against targets of opportunity, mission abort, and coordinated multi-missile swarm attacks. That places Çakır well below Roketsan’s larger SOM-family stand-off missiles — around 600 kilograms, air-launched only, rated past 250 kilometers — in a lighter class built to serve several branches of the armed forces with a common weapon rather than separate munitions for each.

Filling out the Land Forces’ strike options

For the Land Forces Command, Çakır is meant to work alongside Roketsan’s Kara Atmaca, a longer-range, ground-launched land-attack cruise missile already moving toward service, rather than replace it. The two give Turkish ground units a tiered stand-off strike capability that previously belonged mostly to the air force and navy: Kara Atmaca for longer-range land targets, and the lighter, more mobile Çakır for closer precision strikes with the flexibility to launch from a truck-mounted system, a drone, or eventually a naval platform using the same production line and support chain. That commonality is the kind of logistics argument Turkish programme officials have made before — fewer missile families to stock, maintain and train crews on across services.

Why it matters beyond Türkiye

A confirmed home-army order typically strengthens a Turkish weapon’s export pitch, since foreign buyers can point to Turkish Armed Forces use as validation — a pattern already visible with Roketsan’s Atmaca anti-ship missile and Baykar’s combat drones. Çakır already carries that credibility in reverse: by Indonesia’s own account it reached export customers before it had a confirmed domestic Land Forces order. With Wednesday’s contract, the company can now market Çakır as a system in service with its home military as well as abroad, at a moment when ground-launched precision-strike missiles are drawing interest well beyond Türkiye’s traditional buyer base in the Gulf and Southeast Asia.

Neither SSB nor Roketsan said when deliveries to the Land Forces would begin.

Sources: TRT Haber, Roketsan official product specifications.

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