Qatar Weighs Türkiye’s Aselsan Steel Dome Air Defense After Ministerial Talks
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Qatar is evaluating a Turkish proposal to buy Aselsan’s integrated Steel Dome air and missile defense architecture after Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met Turkish counterparts in Ankara on October 28, 2025. If adopted, Steel Dome would provide layered, sovereign coverage beneath Qatar’s U.S. Patriot and NASAMS backbone while Barzan Holdings’ 49.9 percent stake in a new BMC factory offers a path to localize sustainment and lower life-cycle costs.
Doha is assessing a Turkish offer of Aselsan’s Steel Dome following Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sheikh Saoud Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani’s visit to Ankara on October 28, 2025, where he met Turkish National Defense Minister Yasar Guler. Official Qatari readouts confirm the Ankara meetings and note parallel industry events that highlight joint projects. There is an explicit role for Barzan Holdings in any follow-on package. The Turkish pitch frames Steel Dome as a scalable, system-of-systems architecture that integrates EIRS early warning radars, ALP family sensors, HERIKKS command and control and a stacked effector suite from Sungur and Korkut to Hisar and Siper, giving Qatar denser short and midrange coverage while preserving data links to U.S. ADOC platforms.Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link
Aselsan’s Steel Dome integrates long-range EIRS radars, HERIKKS command network, and layered interceptors including Korkut guns, Gürz SHORAD, Hisar A/O, and Siper missiles to create a fully networked defense against drones, cruise missiles and ballistic threats across ranges from 4 to over 150 km (Picture source: Aselsan).
Steel Dome, known in Türkiye as Çelik Kubbe, is an integrated, multi-layer air and missile defense architecture that fuses radars, electro-optics, electronic warfare and a family of interceptors under Aselsan’s HERIKKS command and control. The system builds a common air picture, correlates tracks and automates threat evaluation and weapon assignment to compress engagement timelines against drones, cruise missiles and select ballistic profiles. Aselsan and independent technical briefs describe Steel Dome as a system of systems designed to scale from point defense to national coverage.
At the sensing tier, Türkiye’s EIRS early-warning radar provides the long-range backbone, with Turkish industry sources citing a detection range on the order of 470 km against standard targets. To close low-altitude gaps around critical sites, Aselsan’s ALP radar family adds the ALP 300-G long-range S-band AESA and the ALP 100-G low-altitude radar now entering Turkish service. Together, they feed HERIKKS to create a recognized air picture and hand off quality tracks for engagement.
The effector stack starts with the cost-imposing layers required in the Gulf. Sungur provides a man-portable and vehicular very short range missile out to 8 km and 4 km altitude, useful against slow movers and small UAVs. Korkut, a 35 mm self-propelled gun with programmable ATOM airburst, delivers roughly 4 km of effective range against drones and cruise missiles and can operate as platoons under a local C2 node. Gürz, Aselsan’s hybrid SHORAD, marries a 35 mm gun with short-range missiles and organic sensors on an 8×8 chassis to protect mobile formations or fixed sites. For point and coastal defense, the GökSur missile now has a demonstrated 15 km envelope with AI-assisted fire control and IIR guidance, recently validated in live-fire trials on the Black Sea.
Medium-range cover comes from the Hisar family. Hisar A+ is advertised at about 15 km range and up to 8 km altitude, while Hisar O+ extends coverage to roughly 25 km and higher ceilings from road-mobile launchers. The long-range top cover is Siper. Block 1 is publicly stated at beyond 100 km, with Block 2 around 150 km and higher intercept altitudes, and navalized Siper-1D has been test-fired from Türkiye’s indigenous vertical launch system. For Qatar’s calculus, this adds engagement depth beneath Patriot while multiplying shot options against cruise threats.
Steel Dome also layers soft-kill counter-UAS and electronic warfare. The IHTAR suite combines portable radar, EO/IR, and directional or omnidirectional jamming to break up swarms before they reach gun or missile baskets. Modernized Koral systems and associated radar EW families like Vural can suppress or deceive hostile emitters, complicating seekers and surveillance architectures while feeding passive tracks into the C2 picture. These non-kinetic tiers matter for shot-doctrine economy against sustained UAV harassment.
The concept that Ankara is pitching to Doha is a horizontal layer that slots beneath and between Qatar’s U.S.-made backbone. Qatar fielded Patriot fire units through a series of FMS contracts and added NASAMS with AMRAAM-ER, both integrated through a U.S.-built Air and Missile Defense Operations Center program. HERIKKS supports standardized interfaces such as LLAPI to exchange low-level air pictures, enabling gateway-based deconfliction while preserving proprietary cores. In practice, QRADF could stand up Steel Dome clusters around LNG terminals, air bases and urban nodes, feed them into ADOC and keep Patriot for high-end shots.
Program maturity and pacing also weigh in on Doha’s assessment. Türkiye publicly unveiled Steel Dome’s first integrated deliveries in August with 47 vehicles and laid the foundation for Aselsan’s 1.5 billion dollar Ogulbey technology base that aims to more than double production capacity from 2026. Live-fire milestones this fall included GökSur’s intercepts and additional Hisar and Siper test shots, underscoring a test-to-field trajectory rather than a paper concept.
Industrial leverage is where Barzan Holdings comes in. During the October 28 Ankara visit, Qatar and Türkiye inaugurated BMC’s new armored vehicle and heavy engine factory in which Barzan holds a 49.9 percent stake. That footprint gives Doha a platform to localize racks, command posts and some launcher or sensor subassemblies tied to Steel Dome batteries, driving down life-cycle costs and securing sovereign sustainment.
Qatar’s current air defense architecture, centered on Patriot PAC-3 and NASAMS with AMRAAM-ER, provides solid medium- and high-altitude coverage but leaves an exposed seam at the lower tiers. The region’s growing use of small drones, loitering munitions, and low-observable cruise missiles has revealed the limits of traditional high-end interceptors. Turkish officials argue that Steel Dome’s mobile SHORAD elements and counter-UAS modules directly address that vulnerability, offering Qatar a denser, more layered shield and a measure of operational autonomy absent from its current U.S.-supplied structure.
Beyond Qatar, export interest is forming. Reporting and company statements point to Saudi Arabia exploring a NEOM air shield where Turkish solutions are under study, and Aselsan has signaled a forthcoming design office in Saudi Arabia focused on radar, EW and air defense. Analysts in Europe and the Gulf describe early interest from Azerbaijan and Oman, though no foreign Steel Dome orders have been announced.
In Qatar, mobile SHORAD and counter-UAS clusters would harden LNG corridors and air bases, ALP-100-G to seal low-altitude gaps, and HERIKKS to arbitrate shots across Korkut, Gürz, Hisar and Siper while passing a filtered picture to ADOC. If Doha and Ankara codify a localization plan through Barzan and Aselsan sustains the 2026 capacity ramp, Steel Dome offers Doha denser coverage, lower per-shot costs against drones and cruise missiles, and a second long-range line without sacrificing U.S. interoperability.
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Qatar is evaluating a Turkish proposal to buy Aselsan’s integrated Steel Dome air and missile defense architecture after Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani met Turkish counterparts in Ankara on October 28, 2025. If adopted, Steel Dome would provide layered, sovereign coverage beneath Qatar’s U.S. Patriot and NASAMS backbone while Barzan Holdings’ 49.9 percent stake in a new BMC factory offers a path to localize sustainment and lower life-cycle costs.
Doha is assessing a Turkish offer of Aselsan’s Steel Dome following Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sheikh Saoud Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani’s visit to Ankara on October 28, 2025, where he met Turkish National Defense Minister Yasar Guler. Official Qatari readouts confirm the Ankara meetings and note parallel industry events that highlight joint projects. There is an explicit role for Barzan Holdings in any follow-on package. The Turkish pitch frames Steel Dome as a scalable, system-of-systems architecture that integrates EIRS early warning radars, ALP family sensors, HERIKKS command and control and a stacked effector suite from Sungur and Korkut to Hisar and Siper, giving Qatar denser short and midrange coverage while preserving data links to U.S. ADOC platforms.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link
Aselsan’s Steel Dome integrates long-range EIRS radars, HERIKKS command network, and layered interceptors including Korkut guns, Gürz SHORAD, Hisar A/O, and Siper missiles to create a fully networked defense against drones, cruise missiles and ballistic threats across ranges from 4 to over 150 km (Picture source: Aselsan).
Steel Dome, known in Türkiye as Çelik Kubbe, is an integrated, multi-layer air and missile defense architecture that fuses radars, electro-optics, electronic warfare and a family of interceptors under Aselsan’s HERIKKS command and control. The system builds a common air picture, correlates tracks and automates threat evaluation and weapon assignment to compress engagement timelines against drones, cruise missiles and select ballistic profiles. Aselsan and independent technical briefs describe Steel Dome as a system of systems designed to scale from point defense to national coverage.
At the sensing tier, Türkiye’s EIRS early-warning radar provides the long-range backbone, with Turkish industry sources citing a detection range on the order of 470 km against standard targets. To close low-altitude gaps around critical sites, Aselsan’s ALP radar family adds the ALP 300-G long-range S-band AESA and the ALP 100-G low-altitude radar now entering Turkish service. Together, they feed HERIKKS to create a recognized air picture and hand off quality tracks for engagement.
The effector stack starts with the cost-imposing layers required in the Gulf. Sungur provides a man-portable and vehicular very short range missile out to 8 km and 4 km altitude, useful against slow movers and small UAVs. Korkut, a 35 mm self-propelled gun with programmable ATOM airburst, delivers roughly 4 km of effective range against drones and cruise missiles and can operate as platoons under a local C2 node. Gürz, Aselsan’s hybrid SHORAD, marries a 35 mm gun with short-range missiles and organic sensors on an 8×8 chassis to protect mobile formations or fixed sites. For point and coastal defense, the GökSur missile now has a demonstrated 15 km envelope with AI-assisted fire control and IIR guidance, recently validated in live-fire trials on the Black Sea.
Medium-range cover comes from the Hisar family. Hisar A+ is advertised at about 15 km range and up to 8 km altitude, while Hisar O+ extends coverage to roughly 25 km and higher ceilings from road-mobile launchers. The long-range top cover is Siper. Block 1 is publicly stated at beyond 100 km, with Block 2 around 150 km and higher intercept altitudes, and navalized Siper-1D has been test-fired from Türkiye’s indigenous vertical launch system. For Qatar’s calculus, this adds engagement depth beneath Patriot while multiplying shot options against cruise threats.
Steel Dome also layers soft-kill counter-UAS and electronic warfare. The IHTAR suite combines portable radar, EO/IR, and directional or omnidirectional jamming to break up swarms before they reach gun or missile baskets. Modernized Koral systems and associated radar EW families like Vural can suppress or deceive hostile emitters, complicating seekers and surveillance architectures while feeding passive tracks into the C2 picture. These non-kinetic tiers matter for shot-doctrine economy against sustained UAV harassment.
The concept that Ankara is pitching to Doha is a horizontal layer that slots beneath and between Qatar’s U.S.-made backbone. Qatar fielded Patriot fire units through a series of FMS contracts and added NASAMS with AMRAAM-ER, both integrated through a U.S.-built Air and Missile Defense Operations Center program. HERIKKS supports standardized interfaces such as LLAPI to exchange low-level air pictures, enabling gateway-based deconfliction while preserving proprietary cores. In practice, QRADF could stand up Steel Dome clusters around LNG terminals, air bases and urban nodes, feed them into ADOC and keep Patriot for high-end shots.
Program maturity and pacing also weigh in on Doha’s assessment. Türkiye publicly unveiled Steel Dome’s first integrated deliveries in August with 47 vehicles and laid the foundation for Aselsan’s 1.5 billion dollar Ogulbey technology base that aims to more than double production capacity from 2026. Live-fire milestones this fall included GökSur’s intercepts and additional Hisar and Siper test shots, underscoring a test-to-field trajectory rather than a paper concept.
Industrial leverage is where Barzan Holdings comes in. During the October 28 Ankara visit, Qatar and Türkiye inaugurated BMC’s new armored vehicle and heavy engine factory in which Barzan holds a 49.9 percent stake. That footprint gives Doha a platform to localize racks, command posts and some launcher or sensor subassemblies tied to Steel Dome batteries, driving down life-cycle costs and securing sovereign sustainment.
Qatar’s current air defense architecture, centered on Patriot PAC-3 and NASAMS with AMRAAM-ER, provides solid medium- and high-altitude coverage but leaves an exposed seam at the lower tiers. The region’s growing use of small drones, loitering munitions, and low-observable cruise missiles has revealed the limits of traditional high-end interceptors. Turkish officials argue that Steel Dome’s mobile SHORAD elements and counter-UAS modules directly address that vulnerability, offering Qatar a denser, more layered shield and a measure of operational autonomy absent from its current U.S.-supplied structure.
Beyond Qatar, export interest is forming. Reporting and company statements point to Saudi Arabia exploring a NEOM air shield where Turkish solutions are under study, and Aselsan has signaled a forthcoming design office in Saudi Arabia focused on radar, EW and air defense. Analysts in Europe and the Gulf describe early interest from Azerbaijan and Oman, though no foreign Steel Dome orders have been announced.
In Qatar, mobile SHORAD and counter-UAS clusters would harden LNG corridors and air bases, ALP-100-G to seal low-altitude gaps, and HERIKKS to arbitrate shots across Korkut, Gürz, Hisar and Siper while passing a filtered picture to ADOC. If Doha and Ankara codify a localization plan through Barzan and Aselsan sustains the 2026 capacity ramp, Steel Dome offers Doha denser coverage, lower per-shot costs against drones and cruise missiles, and a second long-range line without sacrificing U.S. interoperability.
