Türkiye to ‘eavesdrop on Greek waters with sonobuoys’

Selçuk Böke - ANKARA

Türkiye will eavesdrop on Greece’s underwater activities with sonobuoys, which are relatively small buoy expendable sonar systems dropped from aircraft, an expert has said.

With the help of the system, the Turkish Navy will be able to follow the mobility of Greek submarines under the Aegean and the Mediterranean Seas.

“We have adapted the skill variety of dropping sonobuoys and following sonar activities to Turkish indigenous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs),” said Ömer Yıldız, the deputy general of the UAV Department at Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAŞ), which is the country’s main center for technology in design, development, manufacturing and integration of aerospace systems.

“The sonobuoys, ejected from UAVs, will act like microphones, listening to and analyzing the underwater with radio waves,” he said.

“With the analysis, we will be able to understand if there is a submarine down under or not,” he added.

With today’s technology, the sonobuoy will send the analysis to a computer in a navy center.

“Our next step will be placing the computer that can make acoustic analysis onto the UAV. So that the sonobuoy can immediately share the data and the computer may make the analysis right at that time,” he said. “But we need some time to realize that. We are working on it.”

When asked which UAVs will be used for this mission, Yıldız pointed out “ANKA” and “AKSUNGUR.”

ANKA is a family of UAVs developed by TUSAŞ, envisioned in the early 2000s for aerial surveillance and reconnaissance missions. With two versions, ANKA-B and ANKA-S, the ANKA family has accumulated more than 90,000 flight hours as of March 2021.

AKSUNGUR is TUSAŞ’s largest drone, formed using the existing technology of the ANKA series.

The first flight of the UAV was done on March 20, 2019.

Sonobuoy is a small buoy, typically 13 centimeters in diameter and 91 centimeters long.

An inflatable surface float with a radio transmitter remains on the surface for communication with the aircraft, while one or more hydrophone sensors and stabilizing equipment descend below the surface to a selected depth that is variable, depending on environmental conditions and the search pattern. The buoy relays acoustic information from its hydrophone(s) via UHF/VHF radio to operators on board the aircraft.