I highly doubt if its an intelligence gathering /spy ship. I have seen rare examples of conversion from a combatant to spy ship but they were practically emergency conditions and temporary. And after all i dont think a combatant form has suitable room allocation for generators and engines required for a spy ship's electronics. Moreover, milgem has meant to be a combatant, convertible from ASW to ASuW, or even AAW with proper systems attached, but i doubt if it could a service ship.
I rather consider ufuk to be a training and test vessel, not solely but also a " training to manufacture " of the shipyard. More likely a routine has been set and Pendik shipyard assisted the process of building and fitting. The private shipyard will gain the ability and take the load of incoming I class, to relieve Pendik for TF-2000. Moreover, consider it as a +1 in combatant fleet, it wouldnt take weeks to convert it into an operating Milgem ready for combat.
Seeing other examples of Intelligence ships may clearly be a proof of why Milgem wouldnt make a good and efficient platform for this task. And not the ship, but i guess we need a good basis on EW / intelligence gathering equipments. Wouldnt take much effort to design an efficient platform once the equipments are provided. ( after achieving LST/ Milgem / Dimdeg another service ship isnt a big deal for industry)
Aselsan used to have another project related with test vessel to test their own equipment, a vessel meant to have Dynamic Positioning,but they might have been focused on dynamic positioning more than the vessel itself. Finally a vessel which could be used harsly without concerns of captains, freely and actively.
@Neptune so far i can remember Navy or others have their own intelligence units, how active they are in the field? Once intelligence has mentioned our people could mostly think " fisleme
" could you broaden it for us?
