Why Turkish Navy not developing any guided missile destroyers and frigates because they need them for Anatolian LHD class support vessels
There is such a project and its name is the regional air defense destroyer project, known by the codename TF-2000.
Let me briefly summarize the situation for you:
1. Hisar-class offshore patrol corvettes will be multi-role naval vessels 'optionally' capable of full firepower. Some systems will not be installed in peacetime, but in wartime the ship will be able to use systems without the need for any serious construction work.
Among the optional weapon loads of the ship is an 8-cell vertical launch system. As a quad pack, this means 8x4 32 Hisar-RF low/medium altitude air defense missiles. (Both the HISAR missile family group and the naval versions of the SIPER missile family without boosters have quadpack targets in future.)
2. Class I frigates will have a 16-cell vertical launch system. This means a total of 64 ready-to-fire missiles in quadpack configuration, 32 of which are Hisar-Rf/ESSM-B2 medium altitude + 32 SIPER B1 long range missiles.
If we compare with European systems, Aster missiles do not have the quadpack feature yet. In other words, I class frigates will have more firepower compared to many heavier class in terms of the number of missiles ready to fire. (If there is no such planning by Eurosam or if the operator countries in question will not update the system when such a capability is acquired in the future)
3. Between the I class and the TF-2000, another project (probably with a displacement of around 4000- 5000t) is taking shape. The ship, which we may call as I-class Block II or MILGEM-III, will have a 32-cell vertical launch system very likely. This means 128 missiles max ready to fire.
4. The TF-2000 destroyers, which will be the flagship of the Turkish navy, will have a 64-cell vertical launch system. In the configuration where all cells are used as quadpacks, calculate what firepower it will have.
Briefly:
- 8-cell vertical launch system space will be on 10 piece Hisar class corvettes, and possibly after mid-life modernization of MILGEM-ADA class corvettes, will be total 14 ships.
- 16-cell vertical launch system on 4 I-class frigates
And in addition to this, two of the Barbaros class ships have a vertical launch system with 16 cells and the other two with 8 cells.
- 32 cell vertical launch system will be on the next generation MILGEM frigate, which is under development and possibly will replace the Barbaros class
- Finally, 7 planned regional air defense destroyers will have a 64-cell vertical launch system.
In addition to vertically launched missiles, there are 16 surface-to-surface missile canisters in the frigate and destroyer classes of these ships. In the light of this infos, some ideas can be obtained about the guided missile capacity of the Turkish navy in the 2030s.
The main problem for TN planning was that these types of capabilities were both expensive when wanted to be imported and, as you can see, they could be interfered with for political reasons.
Currently, Turkiye does not only building warships, but also localizes all of its critical subsystems for these ships. All the CMS systems you see, GENESIS ADVENT, KEMENT, CAFRAD, Ship-based cruise missiles and heavy torpedoes, MIDAS (National vertical launch system), GOKDENIZ CIWS, LEVENT-point-defense system, HISAR-RF and O+, SIPER etc., dozens of other sub-systems have been developed, or still under development for this purpose.
Since there are also Greek friends in our forum, we do not write this type of inventory planning in detail so as not to frighten them. lol. In more detail on these issues, well-known Turkish defense industry writers such as Cabatli, ANMDT and others have posts in other Turkish forums. It would be better for those who are interested to have a look other Turkish forums. Since these forums are in the censorship list of the PDF, we cannot write them explicitly.