The Turkish Company ASELSAN has completed the integration of PULAT Active Protection System to Turkish Army’s M60T main battle tanks and ASELSAN’s PULAT protected tanks operate safely as a castle during operations.

Turkish M60T fitted with Aselsan PULAT APS Active Protection System. (Picture source Aselsan)

In the last decade, the heavy involvement of main battle tanks in modern operation environments, triggered the increase of rocket (RPG) and anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) threats against tanks. Traditional passive armors have become inadequate in protecting tanks; hence, taking new kind of measures became an ultimate necessity.

In order to meet this emerging demand, ASELSAN has started working on active protection technologies and developed PULAT System as a first outcome. PULAT has been developed in a very short time span with a great effort and was proven successful against hundreds of RPGs and ATGMs during its qualification phase. PULAT, then was integrated on Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) in M60T tanks and proved its success on the platforms as well. PULAT,-one of the few operationally used active protection systems in the international markets, has significantly increased survivability of Turkish main battle tanks.

PULAT, with its full autonomous functioning ability, allows tank operators to ignore any incoming threats and focus on the main mission. PULAT detects any incoming threats and neutralizes them before they even reach the tanks.

The Turkish Company ASELSAN, ever-growing in active protection technologies, has also been developing an active protection system, namely AKKOR, specially tailored for ALTAY main battle tanks. In addition to the capabilities of PULAT, AKKOR provides protection against asymmetric threats by including soft kill functionalities as well. AKKOR is at the stage of field tests and will be delivered to TAF along with mass production ALTAY main battle tanks.