Turkish anti-drone guns put on show for 12 countries

Turkish defense company ASELSAN has shown its KORKUT 35 air defense gun system shooting down drones and hitting a moving target while driving, in a live-fire demonstration watched by military delegations from 12 countries.

The company released video of the firing.

The demonstration focused on drones, and KORKUT 35 engaged fixed-wing, delta-wing and small mini and micro drones, with particular attention to kamikaze drones built to dive into their targets, ASELSAN said. In a separate scenario, the system, mounted on an 8×8 wheeled armored vehicle, fired at a moving ground target while both were in motion, to show its accuracy and how tightly its rounds grouped.

ASELSAN says the system can also engage fighter jets, helicopters, cruise missiles and air-to-ground missiles, and describes it as a cheaper way to defend troops and key sites against low-cost aerial threats.

KORKUT carries twin 35 mm cannons that together fire about 1,100 rounds a minute, with an effective range of roughly 4 km (2.5 miles). It uses ASELSAN’s ATOM programmable ammunition, which bursts in the air near a target and scatters tungsten fragments, raising the chance of hitting small drones that are hard to strike directly. A typical battery pairs a command vehicle that searches for and tracks targets with gun vehicles that each follow and fire at an assigned target.

The system entered Turkish service in a tracked configuration and has been exported. ASELSAN unveiled the 8×8 wheeled version at the Eurosatory defense show in Paris in 2024, giving it higher road speed to keep up with moving units. In January 2026, the company released footage of the wheeled KORKUT 140/35 shooting down a first-person-view drone while on the move.

The system is also heading to Europe. In February, ASELSAN and Czech defense group CSG formed a joint venture to produce KORKUT in the Czech Republic for European and global customers, and unveiled a version mounted on a Tatra 6×6 truck. In September, KORKUT was identified among air defense systems in a public reveal by the Pakistan Air Force, though the variant supplied has not been disclosed.

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