Turkish Naval Forces test Barkan UGV in amphibious raid

The Turkish Naval Forces used HAVELSAN’s Barkan unmanned ground vehicle to support amphibious raid and urban warfare training and then to evacuate simulated wounded personnel during TURNAs-2026, the service’s unmanned maritime systems exercise under way in the Gulf of Antalya and the eastern Mediterranean from Oct. 19 to 27, the Naval Forces Command said.

The exercise brings unmanned air, surface, underwater and amphibious platforms into the same scenarios as crewed forces, and the Barkan’s role covered both ends of a landing operation: moving with troops during the raid and urban combat phases, and carrying casualties back once the fighting was over.

TURNAs-2026 involves 18 ships, 11 aircraft, nine unmanned aerial vehicles, seven unmanned underwater vehicles and nine unmanned surface vessels, along with 41 systems from 17 Turkish defense companies, Anadolu Agency reported, citing Türkiye’s Ministry of National Defense. Participating Turkish Naval Forces units include a multipurpose amphibious ship, frigates, corvettes, fast attack craft, a submarine, a mine hunter, amphibious landing ships and SH-70 helicopters, as well as unmanned and one-way attack surface vessels and Coast Guard boats.

Built by Ankara-based HAVELSAN, the Barkan is a medium-class unmanned ground vehicle developed under the company’s “digital unit” concept, in which unmanned ground, air and naval systems operate together and share tasks. The Barkan family entered the Turkish Armed Forces inventory in 2023 and moved into mass production in 2025 following a decision by Türkiye’s Presidency of Defense Industries.

The vehicle is designed for a range of missions, including assault, casualty transfer, bomb disposal, surveillance and reconnaissance, and battle damage assessment. Its modular design lets operators fit different payloads, and HAVELSAN has armed versions of the Barkan with remote weapon stations, a laser-guided missile and loitering munitions in earlier tests.

The company unveiled the Barkan 3 at SAHA Expo in Istanbul in May 2026, where HAVELSAN and the Presidency of Defense Industries signed a contract amendment covering the new configuration. HAVELSAN has said the Barkan 3 is intended to operate in swarms alongside unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned surface vessels.

Ukraine became the first country to carry out such unmanned landing and supply operations in actual combat during its war with Russia. On July 13, the 123rd Separate Territorial Defense Brigade used an unmanned surface vessel to land an armed ground robot on the Russian-occupied Kinburn Spit, in what the brigade called the first known combat mission of its kind. Ukrainian forces later used a heavy hexacopter to deliver an ARK-1 ground robot armed with anti-tank mines deep into Russian rear areas, the first known combat operation in which an aerial drone carried a ground robot into battle.

In late September, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said the Alter Ego unit of the 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade had completed the country’s first frontline supply mission with Triton, a domestically built amphibious unmanned ground vehicle that switches from driving to swimming within seconds. The vehicle covered more than 40 km (25 miles) of land and water to deliver supplies to troops on a section of the front cut by rivers and marshland.