MKE’s URAN Mobile Howitzer Nears Qualification as BORAN Exports Grow

Türkiye’s state ordnance maker MKE has confirmed that its URAN vehicle-mounted 105mm howitzer is close to finishing qualification testing, a step that would give the Turkish Armed Forces — and potential export customers — a wheeled companion to the towed BORAN howitzer already in service and already selling abroad.

Fatih Bulanık, the factory manager overseeing the programme, told reporters this week that URAN needs only about a quarter of the testing BORAN went through and should complete qualification within a month. The disclosure, made at an MKE facility and reported by Daily Sabah on September 16, is the clearest timeline MKE has given yet for a system it first showed publicly at SAHA EXPO in Istanbul in May.

From Towed Gun to Wheeled Platform

BORAN is a lightweight 105mm towed howitzer weighing about 1,775 kilograms — light enough, Bulanık said, that “only three howitzers worldwide meet this weight specification.” That makes it transportable underslung by medium-lift helicopters such as the Sikorsky S-70 and CH-47 Chinook, a feature aimed at airborne, commando and rapid-reaction units rather than conventional artillery formations.

The system’s selling point is speed of action rather than raw firepower. MKE says an automatic, GPS-supported fire-control system cuts the time needed to unlimber, lay and fire the gun from roughly 30 minutes with older towed pieces to under a minute. Sustained fire is rated at 6 rounds per minute, with MKE citing bursts of up to 12 rounds in 33 seconds under favourable conditions, out to a maximum range of around 17–18 km.

URAN takes that same 105mm gun and fire-control package and bolts it onto a 4×4 KİA light tactical vehicle, trading the towed gun’s helicopter portability for road speed — MKE quotes a top speed of 130 km/h — and the ability to fire and relocate before counter-battery radar can return fire. MKE has developed URAN’s fire-control system entirely in-house, unlike BORAN, which involved Türkiye’s Presidency of Defense Industries (SSB) in its development. According to MKE, the vehicle has already passed mobility trials including 40-percent gradients and water-obstacle crossings.

Filling a Gap Between Towed Guns and Heavy SPGs

Neither system is meant to replace Türkiye’s 155mm self-propelled artillery. Instead, both occupy a niche that has drawn renewed attention across NATO as armies rethink dispersed, “shoot-and-scoot” fire support: something lighter and cheaper to produce and deploy than a tracked 155mm gun, but faster to reposition and more precise than an unguided towed piece. Genuinely mobile 105mm systems in this class remain rare internationally, which is part of why MKE has had success moving BORAN into export markets faster than many of its other land-systems programmes.

An Export Track Record Already in Place

BORAN’s case is helped by the fact that it is not a paper design. Bangladesh became its first export customer in 2024. North Macedonia took delivery of BORAN howitzers in 2025, and Albania signed for six BORAN systems plus ammunition in July 2026, shortly before that month’s NATO summit in Ankara — making Albania the second NATO member, after North Macedonia, to field the type. None of the manufacturers or governments involved have disclosed contract values for these deals.

That three-country run — one South Asian customer and two NATO members on Europe’s southeastern flank — is a useful data point for a Turkish land-systems export sector that is usually associated with armoured vehicles and precision munitions rather than towed artillery. It also underscores a broader theme in which NATO members are turning to Turkish defence systems: buyers on the alliance’s eastern and southeastern edges have shown a consistent appetite for Turkish equipment that is cheaper to acquire and operate than Western European or American equivalents, without requiring the buyer to stand up a new logistics and training pipeline for a heavy tracked platform. Part of that appeal, as with other Turkish exports, comes down to how little of MKE’s product line is entangled in US ITAR restrictions, which simplifies re-export and end-use approvals for buyers.

MKE has been busy on other fronts this month too, signing a memorandum of understanding with Poland’s PGZ on the TOLGA air defence system and opening its first wholly owned company in Africa, Zafer, in Egypt. BORAN and URAN are a smaller piece of that expansion, but they follow the same pattern: mature, already-qualified Turkish hardware pitched at price-sensitive militaries that NATO’s larger primes have historically found less commercially interesting.

What to Watch

MKE has not named a target in-service date for URAN with the Turkish Armed Forces, nor has it disclosed export interest for the wheeled variant specifically. The company’s own framing — that URAN is a mobility upgrade layered on a combat-proven gun rather than a new weapon system — suggests MKE expects qualification to be relatively low-risk. Whether URAN repeats BORAN’s export momentum will depend on how MKE prices it against towed 105mm guns and against the small number of comparable vehicle-mounted mobile 105mm systems now emerging from other manufacturers for NATO’s distributed-operations concepts.

Sources: Daily Sabah; Army Recognition; MKE public statements.