The SOM ( tr, ) is a next-generation autonomous, stealth, high precision

cruise missile A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial or naval targets that remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhe ...

developed by TÜBİTAK SAGE, Defence Research and Development Institute of Turkey. It was first revealed during the 100th anniversary celebrations of the

Turkish Air Force The Turkish Air Force ( tr, ) is the aerial warfare service branch of the Turkish Armed Forces. The Turkish Air Force can trace its origins back to June 1911 when it was founded by the Ottoman Empire, however, the air force as it is known t ...

at the

Çiğli Air Base Çiğli Air Base ( tr, Çiğli Hava Üssü) is a military airport near Çiğli, a metropolitan district of the city of İzmir in İzmir Province, Turkey. It served as İzmir's airport until the opening of the Adnan Menderes Airport, situated so ...

İzmir İzmir ( , ; ), also spelled Izmir, is a metropolitan city in the western extremity of Anatolia, capital of the province of the same name. It is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara and the second largest urban agglo ...

, on 4 June 2011. Developed since 2006, the SOM is Turkey's first domestic guided missile for striking both stationary and moving targets at a stand-off distance of over 180 kilometers.Turkey reveals stand-off missile bunker buster
''TRDefence''. Retrieved 6 June 2015 Although being developed by TÜBİTAK SAGE which still holds authority over the design of the missile,

ROKETSAN Roketsan Roket Sanayii ve Ticaret A.S. is a major Turkish weapons manufacturer and defense contractor based in Ankara, Turkey. Incorporated in 1988 by Turkey's Defense Industry Executive Committee (''SSİK'') to establish the nation's industri ...

has been given the role of manufacturing and marketing the missile for export. ''David Donald'
UAE is first export success for CIRIT
''Jane's''. Retrieved 20 February 2015

Description

The SOM stand-off cruise missile is a family of

launch and leave Fire-and-forget is a type of missile guidance which does not require further external intervention after launch such as illumination of the target or wire guidance, and can hit its target without the launcher being in line-of-sight of the targe ...

precision strike weapons against both land or sea targets. It uses

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

as its primary mode of guidance complemented by an advanced

Inertial Navigation System An inertial navigation system (INS) is a navigation device that uses motion sensors (accelerometers), rotation sensors ( gyroscopes) and a computer to continuously calculate by dead reckoning the position, the orientation, and the velocity (dire ...

and a radar-based

Terrain Referenced Navigation Terrain or relief (also topographical Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topograp ...

system, allowing the missile to skim the terrain during its flight in order to evade local defence systems. According to the developer, it features advanced geometry and aerodynamics over similar missile systems, as well as lightweight composite components that minimize the radar cross-section of the missile. A terminal stage infrared imager detects the individual target by matching its signature with a pre-loaded database of similar targets allowing for precision strike. It can also be used to provide image-based midcourse navigation by taking snapshots of waypoints and comparing them against predicted position to update the navigation system. Thus, if GPS capability is denied or degraded, the missile can follow its waypoints using infrared based terrain updates. The missile includes a two-way datalink that makes possible to change the task in flight.Turkey's Stand-Off Missile is revealed
''Janes's DSEi2011 Exhibition News''. 14 September 2011 The basic design of the missile includes a fuselage designed specifically to fit in the internal weapons bays of the

Joint Strike Fighter Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a development and acquisition program intended to replace a wide range of existing fighter, strike, and ground attack aircraft for the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands ...

. It is intended to achieve high accuracy in striking military targets like command and control facilities, SAM sites, parked aircraft and surface ships.

Development

Tests

According to the TUBITAK-SAGE officials, the initial demonstration flights of the prototypes were completed successfully. The missile made its first guided flight on 9 August 2011 over the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...

. Covering more than 100 nautical miles using GPS/INS guidance, the missile successfully hit its target with high accuracy. It was planned to assess the design aspects of the missile by conducting about 30 test flights. The delivery of a first batch of missiles to the Turkish Air Force would take place by the end of 2011, following more complicated live firing tests planned for the rest of the year. In 2013 SOM successfully hit its target from a 800km distance.

Range

While initially the range of the missile was announced to be 100 nmi, debates arose in local press around the missile's real range after Prime Minister

Recep Tayyip Erdogan Recep may refer to: People Surname * Aziz Recep (born 1992), German-Greek footballer * Sibel Recep (born 1987), Swedish pop singer Given name * Recep Adanır (born 1929), Turkish footballer * Recep Akdağ (born 1960), Turkish physician and poli ...

unexpectedly set objectives for the development of a missile with a range of at the plenary session of the High Science and Technology Council on 28 December 2011. Shortly after, head of the

Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey The Scientific and Technological Research Institution of Turkey ( tr, Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu, TÜBİTAK) is a national agency of Turkey whose stated goal is to develop "science, technology and innovation" (STI) policies ...

(TÜBİTAK) Yücel Altınbaşak informed that they set a task to develop the missile to within 2 years. "The SOM missile is currently tested for range and successfully achieved precision goal, demonstrating around accuracy in live fires. We are planning to start range tests this year. Later the range will be extended to and finally to in 2014", he said.

Production

On 26 October 2018, Turkey's defence industry authority announced that the missile entered serial production phase with Roketsan.

Variants

TUBITAK-SAGE developed the missile in several configurations, with different warheads and guidance/communication packages: *SOM-A:

inertial In classical physics and special relativity, an inertial frame of reference (also called inertial reference frame, inertial frame, inertial space, or Galilean reference frame) is a frame of reference that is not undergoing any acceleration ...

guidance, high-explosive fragmentation warhead. *SOM-B1:

imaging infrared Infrared thermography (IRT), thermal video and/or thermal imaging, is a process where a thermal camera captures and creates an image of an object by using infrared radiation emitted from the object in a process, which are examples of infrared i ...

guidance, high-explosive fragmentation warhead. *SOM-B2:

guidance,

tandem-charge A tandem-charge or dual-charge weapon is an explosive device or projectile that has two or more stages of detonation, assisting it to penetrate either reactive armour on an armoured vehicle or strong structures. Anti-tank Tandem charges are ...

warhead for use against hardened targets. *SOM-C1:

guidance, high-explosive fragmentation warhead for use against mobile targets. Still in development. *SOM-C2:

guidance,

warhead for use against hardened mobile targets. Still in development. *SOM-J:

guidance,

semi armour-piercing Armour-piercing ammunition (AP) is a type of projectile designed to penetrate either body armour or vehicle armour. From the 1860s to 1950s, a major application of armour-piercing projectiles was to defeat the thick armour carried on many warsh ...

warhead for use against ships. Still in development. SOM-C1, C2 and J variants will feature a data-link for man-in-the-loop update of a waypoint and terminal stage of the missile.

Foreign Partnerships

F-35 Lightning II

On 24 October 2014

Roketsan Roketsan Roket Sanayii ve Ticaret A.S. is a major Turkish weapons manufacturer and defense contractor based in Ankara, Turkey. Incorporated in 1988 by Turkey's Defense Industry Executive Committee (''SSİK'') to establish the nation's industri ...

and

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American aerospace, arms, defense, information security, and technology corporation with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It ...

entered into a teaming agreement whereby the parties would modify, produce and market jointly a new variant of the SOM missile, dubbed SOM-J, for use in the internal carriages of the F-35. The SOM was one of two cruise missiles to be integrated with the F-35, the other being the

Joint Strike Missile The Joint Strike Missile (JSM) is a multi-role, air-launched missile under development by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA) and American company Raytheon Missiles & Defense. The JSM is derived from the Naval Strike Missile. ...

developed by

Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace is one of three business units of Kongsberg Gruppen (KONGSBERG) of Norway and the supplier of defence and space related systems and products, mainly anti-ship missiles, military communications, and command and weapon ...

of Norway. As of 2019, the status of further integration has been put in doubt following Turkey's expulsion from the F-35 program as a result of its purchase of the Russian S-400 air-defense system.

Users

* : The SOM missile has been integrated for use on

TAI Tai or TAI may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Tai (comics) a fictional Marvel Comics supervillain *Tai Fraiser, a fictional character in the 1995 film ''Clueless'' *Tai Kamiya, a fictional character in ''Digimon'' Businesses and organisations ...

produced

F-16 Fighting Falcon The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful ...

and Turkish Air Force operated

F-4E The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is an American Tandem#Aviation, tandem two-seat, twinjet, twin-engine, all-weather, long-range supersonic aircraft, supersonic jet interceptor aircraft, interceptor and fighter-bomber originally developed ...

2020. Also planned to be used on the Bayraktar Akıncı UCAV. It is estimated that so far, a total of 495+ Stand-Off Missile (SOM) ALCMs have been ordered under two separate contracts (80+415) * : Azerbaijan Air Force (AAF) has bought SOM missiles from the Turkish company of Roketsan.

References

{{Reflist Anti-ship cruise missiles Air-to-surface missiles of Turkey Cruise missiles of Turkey Post–Cold War weapons of Turkey Roketsan products Military equipment introduced in the 2010s

Description

Development

Tests

Range

Production

Variants

Foreign Partnerships

F-35 Lightning II

Users

See also

References