Turkish Navy Corvette Visits Hong Kong Ahead Of Goodwill Visit To Japan – Naval News
The corvette demonstrates the capabilities of Turkish Naval Forces and promote the nation’s domestic platforms and systems.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the diplomatic relations between Turkey and Japan as well as commemorating 134th anniversary of the Frigate Ertuğrul’s tragic incident off the coast of Japan, the Turkish Naval Forces 4th and final Ada-class corvette, the TCG Kinaliada (F-514) left Turkey on April 8th and is scheduled to arrive in Japan on June 8th . But before sailing to Japan, the corvette arrived in Hong Kong on 30th May to resupply. The Turkish navy held a press briefing the following day.
The Ertuğrul was an Old Ottoman Frigate that set sail from the Ottoman Empire to Japan in July 1889 with more than 600 men to pay Japan a goodwill visit in return for the previous visit of Prince Komatsu of Japan to Istanbul. After the year-long journey, the frigate finally arrived in Japan in June 1980; however, during the ship’s return journey in September, the Ertuğrul encountered a severe typhoon that took all but 69 sailors of the ship. The Japanese Navy at that time escorted the survivors of the Ertuğrul back to Istanbul with two Frigates, Hiei and Kongo; in addition, a monument was also built in Oshima, Japan to commemorate this tragic accident and the friendship between the two nations.
During the press briefing, Mr Kerim Sercan Evcin, the Consulate General of the Republic of Turkey in Hong Kong highlighted the importance of the TCG Kinaliada’s Asia deployment as she represents an excellent reflection of the Turkish defense industries’ capabilities and achievements over the last two decades as the nation’s defense industries reduced its dependency in foreign defense requirements from 80% to 20%.
As the last ship of her class, the TCG Kinaliada has many firsts with lots of new domestic systems first being implemented into this modern platform. The corvette is the first ship of her class to replace the US-built RGM-84L Harpoon Anti-ship Missile with the domestic ATMACA, a subsonic, sea-skimming anti-ship missile with high resistance to countermeasures and advanced pre-flight and in-flight mission planning system, developed in partnership between the Turkish Naval Research Center Command and Roketsan. This advanced domestic missile will be installed on the rest of the Ada-class Corvettes, the future Istanbul-class frigates, as well as the future TF2000 anti-air warfare destroyers.
TCG Kinaliada is also the first ship to be fitted with the ADVENT Combat Management System, a domestic advanced integrated command and control system developed by HAVELSAN. With the focus of force oriented in mind, it brings network enabled capability, force-wide threat assessment and multi-platform engagement planning and execution. Not only the ADVENT will be installed on multiple Turkish surface combatants and support ships, but the exported ships to Ukraine, Malaysia, Indonesia and Qatar as well.
