KORAL II: ASELSAN’s Radar Electronic Support and Attack System

KORAL II is the designation under which ASELSAN first documented its next-generation land-based radar electronic warfare system, a machine built to find hostile air-defence radars, work out what they are, and then blind or deceive them from a distance. The system is not a single vehicle but a pairing of two subsystems: a radar electronic support element that searches, intercepts, analyses and direction-finds radar emissions, and a radar electronic attack element that jams and spoofs them. Every ASELSAN datasheet in this family names the same mission, the suppression of enemy air defences, rendered in Turkish as Dusman Hava Savunmasini Bastirma. In February 2026 the President of Turkey’s Presidency of Defence Industries announced that the new-generation system, by then carrying the designation KORAL 200, would be taken into Turkish Armed Forces inventory during 2026.

What KORAL II Is Designed To Do

KORAL II belongs to a small category of equipment: ground-based standoff jammers built to degrade an integrated air defence network from outside its engagement envelope. The logic is straightforward. Modern air defences are layered and networked, and defeating them by flying into them costs aircraft. A ground-based jammer sitting behind friendly lines can suppress the sensor picture so that the striking platform, increasingly an unmanned one, survives the ingress.

Two subsystems, two halves of one problem

KORAL II splits into the Radar Elektronik Destek Sistemi, or Radar Electronic Support System, generally shortened to KORAL ED, and the Radar Elektronik Taarruz Sistemi, or Radar Electronic Attack System, KORAL ET. The support half listens. It searches the spectrum, intercepts emissions, analyses and classifies them, and establishes the direction they came from. The attack half responds in the electromagnetic sense, applying jamming and deception techniques against the emitters the support half has catalogued. Neither is useful without the other: jamming a radar you have not identified is a waste of power and an invitation to be located.

The SEAD mission

ASELSAN’s own one-line mission statement, common to the KORAL II, KORAL/NG and KORAL 200 datasheets, is that the system supports suppression of enemy air defence operations by building information dominance and providing fast response time in a challenging environment. In the standard SEAD and DEAD division of labour, KORAL provides the S: the soft kill, the temporary blinding, the confusion that opens a window. The destruction half is expected to come from other tools, principally anti-radiation loitering munitions and armed unmanned aircraft.

ASELSAN General Manager and Chief Executive Ahmet Akyol has offered the most quotable framing of the intended effect. Speaking around IDEF 2025 and reported by Turkish technology outlet DonanimHaber on 25 July 2025, Akyol described the new version as creating an electronic highway for unmanned aircraft and fighter jets during operations. In an ASELSAN-sponsored article published by Defense One in July 2025, he put it more sharply, saying that ASELSAN sees KORAL 200 as a system that brings the fight to the radar before the radar ever has a chance to fight back.

The Naming Problem: KORAL, KORAL 100, KORAL II and KORAL 200

Anyone researching this system runs into a genuine, unresolved naming tangle, and it is more honest to set it out than to smooth it over. At least five names circulate in the public record, and they are anchored to different documents and different dates.

What each name is anchored to

• KORAL is the original system, the product of the Kara SOJ, or Land Stand-Off Jammer, project. Defense News reported its delivery to the Turkish Air Force at a ceremony on 23 February 2016.
• KORAL 100 is the designation ASELSAN itself used in its Newsletter No. 13, published on 1 October 2025, when it announced that it had completed a comprehensive modernisation of the original system. On ASELSAN’s own usage, KORAL 100 denotes the modernised baseline.
• KORAL/NG, for New Generation, was unveiled through ASELSAN video and social media on 12 November 2020, as reported by Army Recognition on 18 November 2020. It has its own official ASELSAN datasheet.
• KORAL II has its own official ASELSAN datasheet as well. The Turkish outlet DefenceTurk published its description of the KORAL II Radar Elektronik Destek ve Taarruz Sistemi on 29 July 2023, immediately after IDEF 2023.
• KORAL 200 was unveiled at IDEF 2025, which opened in Istanbul on 23 July 2025, and also has its own official ASELSAN datasheet. DefenceTurk, writing on 1 August 2025, characterised the progression as moving from a prototype at IDEF 2023 to a production-ready system at IDEF 2025.

Turkish media reporting the February 2026 inventory announcement used the forms KORAL-2 and KORAL-II, which adds a further layer of ambiguity for readers trying to match a designation to a specific configuration.

A reading of the documents, not a confirmed fact

Comparing the three official ASELSAN datasheets, for KORAL II, KORAL/NG and KORAL 200, the descriptive text is essentially identical: the same phrasing about the Operation Control Unit, the same subsystem bullet structure, the same mission-planning and post-mission analysis tools. The strong reading of that evidence is that KORAL/NG, KORAL II and KORAL 200 are successive marketing designations applied to one continuously developed next-generation product, with KORAL 200 the current production name, while KORAL 100 denotes the modernised original. That is an inference drawn from comparing published documents. ASELSAN has not published any statement saying so, and it should not be reported as established fact. What can be said with confidence is that ASELSAN has used several names for its new-generation ground-based radar electronic warfare system, and that KORAL II is the designation under which the current generation was first documented.

One name that does not belong to the family

KORAL 23-LT is a separate matter entirely. According to DefenceTurk reporting of 15 April 2026, it is a tactical field training system, a radar jamming and deception simulator originally contracted in 2007 under the name RaKAS and later renamed. It is not an operational standoff jammer, and readers who encounter the name in search results should not conflate it with the KORAL ED and ET combination described here.

Programme History

From Kara SOJ to a 2016 delivery

The Land-Based Stand-Off Jammer project began in 2009, a date given both by English Wikipedia’s article on the system and by the Royal United Services Institute in a commentary by Ali Bakir published on 27 September 2021. Defence Turkey magazine, in a 7 April 2016 account, reported that testing and verification ran from 2013, that more than 1,000 acceptance tests were conducted before delivery, that around 50 domestic subcontractors were involved, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, and that the programme absorbed more than 500,000 hours of design workmanship. Turkish outlet SavunmaSanayiST reports that the system was tested successfully against S-300 radar systems at the Konya Electronic Warfare Test Range.

Defense News reported the delivery ceremony of 23 February 2016, at which ASELSAN handed the radar electronic attack system to the Turkish Air Force. Faik Eken, then ASELSAN General Manager, said the company was happy to have developed a system that a limited number of countries in the world have in their inventories. Ismail Demir, at the time Turkey’s Undersecretary for Defence Industries, said that recent wars had shown how important electronic warfare is, and that there was full determination to continue equipping Turkey’s security forces with modern weapons. Speaking to Defence Turkey, Demir added a line that has aged well: he expected the project to become a beacon of hope for the Airborne SOJ as well. Eken, in the same publication, described the system as a pioneer among the electronic warfare capabilities of the Turkish Armed Forces.

One source conflict is worth recording. SavunmaSanayiST places the start of deliveries from 2015 onwards, while Defense News and RUSI anchor the public delivery to February 2016, with RUSI stating that KORAL entered Turkish Armed Forces inventory in 2016.

The new generation appears

On 12 November 2020 ASELSAN unveiled KORAL/NG through its own video and social media channels. Army Recognition, reporting on 18 November 2020, wrote that the redesigned system offered more capabilities in terms of detection than the version already in service, and that it opens the safe air corridor needed in the operational field by detecting and effectively mixing even the most effective and popular radar threats.

A month later, on 17 December 2020, the Presidency of Defence Industries and ASELSAN signed an amendment to an Elektronik Harp Sistemi Projesi, an Electronic Warfare System Project, disclosed through Turkey’s Public Disclosure Platform with a value of 315,000,000 Turkish lira plus 18,994,556 US dollars and deliveries scheduled for 2022 to 2024. DefenceTurk, which reported the disclosure on 17 December 2020, noted that the amendment does not explicitly name KORAL or KORAL II as the project being amended. It is therefore useful only as an indicator of the tempo of SSB and ASELSAN electronic warfare contracting in that period, not as a KORAL II contract.

KORAL II appeared at IDEF 2023 and, on DefenceTurk’s later characterisation, did so as a prototype. At IDEF 2025 in Istanbul, ASELSAN presented KORAL 200 as a production-ready system, alongside GOKTAN for ground precision strike, the high-power electromagnetic counter-UAV system EJDERHA, the unmanned air defence system GURZ and the brigade-level mobile communications system TURAN. ASELSAN’s release quoted Akyol saying that with nearly 50 years of expertise the company continuously adapts to evolving battlefield challenges.

Modernisation of the baseline, and a 2026 target

ASELSAN’s Newsletter No. 13 of 1 October 2025 announced completion of the KORAL 100 modernisation and its integration into the Steel Dome architecture, a development reported by Defence Industry Europe on 11 October 2025. ASELSAN described the modernisation as adding wider frequency coverage, higher output power, advanced AESA antenna beam steering, and simultaneous multi-target jamming and deception. The company stated that with its adaptive electronic support and electronic attack capabilities, KORAL 100 increases detection, suppression and deception effectiveness against agile and layered threats while protecting friendly elements and ensuring information superiority.

The current status marker comes from early February 2026. Professor Haluk Gorgun, President of the Presidency of Defence Industries, announced that the new-generation ground-based electronic warfare system KORAL 200 would be taken into Turkish Armed Forces inventory during 2026. The same announcement covered ILGAR-II, the second-generation V/UHF communications electronic attack system, whose deliveries are to be completed in the same period; ASELSAN-developed directed infrared countermeasures for helicopter integration; and at least two units each of the ALP 100G low-altitude AESA radar and the ALP 300G ballistic missile early warning radar. Gorgun characterised the package as delivering a simultaneous capability increase across the electronic warfare, air defence and early warning layers. SavunmaSanayiST and SSBulten place the remarks at SSB’s 2025-results and 2026-targets press event in Antalya, held around the 5th Global Strategies in Defence Industry Conference, although not every outlet that carried the KORAL 200 line named the venue. As of late August 2026, that statement of intent remains the only public status marker; no confirmed delivery of KORAL 200 has been announced.

A further name surfaced in May 2026. At SAHA EXPO 2026, ASELSAN introduced a KORAL AD, or Air Defence, Electronic Warfare System, described by MilitaryLeak on 10 May 2026 as a land-based mobile radar electronic warfare system integrating electronic support and electronic attack on a single platform, offering long-range detection, identification and classification of hostile radars together with an anti-access and area denial capability against enemy aircraft radars. No ASELSAN datasheet for KORAL AD has been identified, and whether it is a distinct product or another naming of the same family remains unresolved.

Inside KORAL II: Design and Subsystems

Radar Electronic Support System

The published feature list for the electronic support subsystem, consistent across the KORAL II, KORAL/NG and KORAL 200 datasheets, describes a modular design built on a multiple-receiver architecture that provides wide instantaneous bandwidth and high sensitivity. Wide frequency and spatial coverage is intended to deliver a high probability of intercept. The subsystem measures signal parameters with high accuracy, specifically radio frequency, pulse repetition interval, pulse width and direction of arrival, and it can handle both conventional and newly emerging threat signals. Identification is automatic, performed against an internal threat library.

Two direction-finding methods are listed: amplitude comparison and a rotating antenna. Multi-platform position fixing allows two or more units to cooperate in fixing an emitter’s location, which is the difference between knowing a bearing and knowing a target. ASELSAN’s sponsored article in Defense One adds detail not present on the datasheets, stating that the electronic support side operates in dense pulse repetition frequency environments and against continuous wave and low-probability-of-intercept signals, and performs direction finding using both amplitude and phase comparison methods. That text is official ASELSAN material, but it is marketing copy rather than a specification sheet.

Radar Electronic Attack System

The KORAL II radar electronic attack subsystem is built around an integrated digital receiver, technique generator and digital radio frequency memory architecture. DRFM is the component that matters most in modern jamming: by storing a hostile radar’s own waveform and replaying it with controlled modifications, the jammer can generate false targets, false ranges and false velocities rather than simply raising the noise floor. Coherent deception is far harder for an operator to recognise and reject than brute-force noise.

The published features continue with a phased array antenna offering fast beam steering, high output power drawn from multiple solid-state amplifiers, wide frequency and spatial coverage, automatic jamming selection from an internal technique library, and simultaneous application of multiple jamming techniques against multiple emitters. For the modernised KORAL 100, ASELSAN’s newsletter specifies AESA beam steering. Defence Turkey reported in 2016 that the original system used active electronic scanning components for efficient attacks against multiple targets.

On the difference the new generation makes, the single most quotable figure is Akyol’s. Reported by DonanimHaber on 25 July 2025 and by DefenceTurk on 1 August 2025, and repeated by Defence-Industry.eu on 28 July 2025, the claim is that the new version is roughly twice as powerful as the existing KORAL. That is a manufacturer statement about relative output, not an independently measured figure.

Operation Control Unit

All three datasheets, and DefenceTurk’s KORAL II article, describe an Operasyon Kontrol Birimi, or Operation Control Unit, with three multifunctional consoles and a three-person crew. An Elektronik Destek Operatoru handles detection, analysis and direction finding; an electronic attack operator handles jamming, deception and resource allocation; and a supervisor coordinates operations and communication between systems. The unit complies with NATO standards and provides nuclear, biological and chemical protection, which Defense Mirror’s February 2026 write-up rendered as CBRN protection. Defense Talks, writing in July 2025, described the KORAL 200 mission control unit in the same terms and mentioned position fixing with high circular error probable precision.

Mission planning and post-mission analysis

The KORAL II datasheet, like those for KORAL/NG and KORAL 200, lists a Gorev Planlama Araci, a mission planning tool used before a mission for threat modelling and system configuration, and a post-mission analysis capability for reviewing recorded data and signals. The second of these is the less glamorous half and arguably the more important one: a standoff jammer that records what it heard is also a sensor that feeds the national threat library, and every sortie improves the identification performance of the next.

KORAL II Mobility, Shelters and Crew

Both Army Recognition, in its 2020 coverage, and the technical reference Radartutorial describe the KORAL configuration as riding on two 8×8 military tactical trucks, with the electronic support system on one vehicle and the electronic attack system on the other. Defence Turkey reported in April 2016 that the two vehicles can operate up to 500 metres apart, connected by fibre-optic cable, and Radartutorial gives the same separation figure. That 500 metre link is the only published remote-operation figure, and it is consistent with the full Turkish description of the system as a Kara Konuslu Uzaktan Elektronik Destek ve Elektronik Taarruz Sistemi, a land-based remote electronic support and electronic attack system.

Unit composition is a genuine source conflict that has never been resolved publicly. English Wikipedia’s article states that an operational unit comprises four electronic support systems and one electronic attack system, each on an 8×8 truck. SavunmaSanayiST states the reverse arrangement, one KORAL ED and four KORAL ET per deployment. Both are reported here without preference, because no primary source settles the question.

Environmental figures given by SavunmaSanayiST, Radartutorial and Army Recognition put the operating temperature range at minus 30 to plus 50 degrees Celsius and humidity tolerance at up to 95 per cent, with SavunmaSanayiST adding a storage range of minus 40 to plus 60 degrees Celsius. Mobility is not a convenience feature on a system of this type. A high-power jammer is by definition a bright emitter and therefore a target, and displacement discipline is a survival requirement rather than a nicety.

Key Characteristics of the KORAL II Family

What ASELSAN Does Not Publish

The gaps in the public record are as informative as the entries, and they deserve to be stated plainly rather than filled with plausible-sounding numbers.

ASELSAN publishes no frequency range on any of the three datasheets, only the phrase wide frequency coverage, and describes the modernised KORAL 100 as having wider frequency coverage without quantifying it. The one band figure available from a technical reference is Radartutorial’s S band to K band for KORAL, and it should be attributed to that source rather than to the manufacturer.

No range figure appears on the KORAL II, KORAL/NG or KORAL 200 datasheets either. The manufacturer has never confirmed a detection or jamming range for this system. The figures in circulation come from third parties and do not agree with one another: English Wikipedia gives 200 km, Radartutorial and Army Recognition put it in excess of 150 km, and RUSI and Daily Sabah give a 150 to 200 km band. SavunmaSanayiST has published a substantially larger figure of roughly 450 to 500 km, but that outlet explicitly labels it an estimate derived from reading a single presentation graphic, not a specification, and it should never be repeated as one.

No source publishes a number of simultaneous targets. No source publishes setup or teardown times; the available language is uniformly qualitative, with DonanimHaber and DefenceTurk describing a modular architecture enabling rapid deployment across varied terrain and Daily Sabah referring to a truck-mounted design for rapid repositioning. The number of systems built, delivered or in Turkish service is not public, and no contract value specific to KORAL II or KORAL 200 has been disclosed. For a country that publicises its defence programmes energetically, the discipline around these particular figures is itself a data point.

Operational Record: Claims and Counterweights

This is the part of the KORAL story most prone to exaggeration, and almost every element of it is a claim rather than a confirmation. It is presented here with that framing intact.

Operation Spring Shield, Idlib, 2020

Michael Tanchum, writing in The Turkey Analyst on 25 March 2020, claimed that Turkey employed KORAL, which he described as able to create ghost images on enemy radar, enabling Bayraktar TB2 and Anka drones to inflict heavy damage. Can Kasapoglu of the Jamestown Foundation reported on 17 April 2020 that within one week Turkish unmanned aircraft destroyed a total of eight Pantsir and Buk air defence systems. RUSI’s Ali Bakir wrote in September 2021 that KORAL secured the aerial dominance that enabled drones to neutralise 151 tanks, eight helicopters, three fighter jets and eight air defence systems, and that KORAL reportedly blinded Russian-made Pantsir radars. English Wikipedia attributes to Fahrettin Altun, at the time the Turkish Presidency’s Director of Communications, a statement that KORAL created ghost areas on Syrian and Russian radars.

The counterweight belongs in the same paragraph as the claims. Reference material on Operation Spring Shield notes that the specific KORAL capability and effectiveness claims are not independently verified, and that casualty figures diverge sharply, with Turkey claiming more than 3,159 Syrian losses against independent estimates in the range of 405 to 600. Turkey lost three unmanned aircraft during the operation, a TAI Anka-S on 1 March and two Bayraktar platforms on 2 and 4 March, and stated that 40 of its soldiers were killed. None of that disproves the electronic warfare claims, but it does establish that the operation was not the frictionless demonstration it is sometimes described as.

Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh

Bakir’s RUSI commentary claims that KORAL rendered Libyan National Army air defences, including S-125, SA-6 and Pantsir S-1 systems, ineffective, with reports of at least 15 Pantsir systems destroyed. For Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, the same commentary claims the system reduced Russian-made Armenian air defence formations to junk, and Daily Sabah reports that KORAL was coordinated with Bayraktar TB2 drones during Azerbaijan’s offensive. These are assertions made in commentary pieces rather than verified counts.

A more careful reading of the same events comes from Royal Air Force Flight Lieutenant Chris Whelan, quoted by Daily Sabah, who said that it was not the unmanned combat aircraft themselves but the coordination with other arms which proved decisive, including artillery fires and electronic warfare. That formulation, combined arms rather than a single decisive system, is the more defensible version of the argument, and it is also a better description of what a standoff jammer actually contributes.

Al-Watiya, 4 July 2020: the jammer as a target

On 4 July 2020, unidentified aircraft struck Al-Watiya Air Base southwest of Tripoli in Libya. English Wikipedia’s account of the strike lists a KORAL system among the Turkish equipment destroyed, alongside MIM-23 Hawk air defence systems, with at least nine targets hit. Attribution of the attacker is disputed: Turkish officials suggested the aircraft were probably Emirati Mirage 2000s, while other reporting pointed to French Rafales or Egyptian forces. Al-Arabiya reported three radars destroyed and Turkish personnel injured, and Libya Akhbar claimed six Turkish servicemen were killed.

The episode is the necessary counterpoint to the capability narrative. A standoff jammer radiates enormous power by design, which makes it detectable, locatable and worth striking. Mobility and displacement discipline are not optional features of such a system, and at Al-Watiya they were not sufficient. Any assessment of KORAL II or its successors has to account for survivability as much as for effect.

KORAL II Operators and Exports

The Turkish Armed Forces are the primary customer, with the original system handed to the Turkish Air Force Command in 2016. The one confirmed export in the public record is Morocco, with a contract valued at 50.7 million US dollars reported in June 2021 by outlets including Global Defense Corp, Assahifa and Caliber.az. Interest has been reported from Oman and Iraq, mentioned by RUSI in 2021 and, in Oman’s case, by Army Recognition in August 2021, but reported interest is not a contract and should not be presented as one.

On 19 December 2025 ASELSAN signed a 410 million dollar electronic warfare export contract with Poland’s Armament Agency. The reporting, including by Defense Advancement, EDR Magazine and Army Recognition, refers to advanced electronic warfare systems and does not name KORAL. The contract is therefore evidence of ASELSAN’s electronic warfare export momentum, not of a KORAL sale to Poland. Polish Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said the agreement had been under negotiation for a long period and that its finalisation followed immediately after his official visit to Turkiye. For scale, envantermedya reports that ASELSAN closed 2025 with 272 export contracts across 58 countries and an order backlog of 20 billion dollars.

KORAL II in ASELSAN’s Electronic Warfare Portfolio

KORAL II occupies the radar-band, ground-based, standoff corner of a portfolio that extends across communications jamming, airborne jamming, naval electronic warfare and counter-drone work. Defense Advancement, relaying ASELSAN’s own framing, describes the company as operating Europe’s largest electronic warfare facility and as having worked in the discipline for more than 40 years.

HAVA SOJ, the airborne companion

The natural companion to a ground-based standoff jammer is an airborne one, and Turkey’s is HAVA SOJ, also designated ASOJ 23-A, built on a Bombardier Global 6000 business jet modified by Turkish Aerospace with an ASELSAN electronic warfare suite. Public reporting describes four aircraft planned, one in service and three in production, with first aircraft delivery scheduled for 2026 and final delivery expected in 2028, initial deployment planned for late 2026 or 2027, operating altitude up to 51,000 feet, wideband receivers and DRFM jammers together with signals and electronic intelligence collection, and self-protection by Leonardo’s Miysis directed infrared countermeasures. The Aviationist reported the aircraft breaking cover on 5 March 2026, and a public video was released in June 2026 for the 115th anniversary of the Turkish Air Force. Comparable aircraft include the United States Air Force EA-37B Compass Call, Australia’s MC-55A Peregrine and France’s Falcon Archange. Demir’s 2016 remark that KORAL would be a beacon of hope for the Airborne SOJ has, a decade on, acquired a concrete referent.

The hard-kill complement

The destruction half of the SEAD and DEAD pairing is KARGI, an indigenous anti-radiation loitering munition intended to replace Turkey’s ageing Israeli-supplied Harpy systems, with LENTATEK as prime contractor, a TEI PG-50 piston engine and a TUBITAK SAGE warhead. SavunmaSanayiST, reporting on 29 January 2019, described a project initiated in 2015 and disclosed at the 2018 Defence Industry Summit, expected to feature a passive radar seeker, loitering during target search and a home-on-jam capability. That reporting is now seven years old and KARGI’s current status is not established here. The doctrinal shape is nonetheless clear: the jammer blinds and confuses, and a loitering munition or an armed unmanned aircraft kills the emitter.

Communications and counter-drone electronic warfare

SANCAK, ASELSAN’s MILKAR-4A2 high-frequency jamming system, was delivered to the Turkish Armed Forces on 15 July 2021 and operates in the 3 to 30 MHz HF band against ground wave, skywave and near-vertical-incidence skywave communications, mounted on a single 10-tonne sheltered vehicle with dual generators, air conditioning and a ground-wave antenna, and including an electronic support capability and a mission planning tool with radio frequency propagation analysis. C4ISRNET quoted Demir at the delivery describing it as a next-generation electronic attack system that would provide a significant advantage in the field by neutralising strategic communication systems.

ILGAR covers mobile V/UHF communications electronic attack, with ILGAR 3-LT and an enhanced ILGAR 3-LT/NG in ASELSAN’s product listing. ILGAR-II, named alongside KORAL 200 in Gorgun’s February 2026 announcement, is described as offering high radio frequency output power, a wideband receiver with large instantaneous bandwidth, reactive jamming effective against frequency-hopping signals, and electronic attack and support on the move. KANGAL covers counter-IED and counter-UAS jamming, with KANGAL FPV aimed at mini, micro and first-person-view drones and KANGAL-MP at radio-controlled improvised explosive devices; TURDEF reported on 17 July 2024 that deliveries were continuing, with integration on BMC VURAN, KIRPI and KIRPI-II vehicles, a naval KANGAL-D variant, and the ability to operate standalone or within the IHTAR counter-UAS system.

VURAL, also known as REDET-II, is ASELSAN’s other radar electronic support and attack system, and it is the one the company explicitly credits with detecting and identifying threat radar emissions and creating emitter lists and electronic order of battle. That phrase does not appear on the KORAL datasheets. The KORAL ED’s cataloguing of RF, PRI, PW and DOA parameters and its post-mission analysis tool perform functionally similar work, but the explicit electronic order of battle language belongs to ASELSAN’s description of VURAL. Daily Sabah reports that VURAL provided real-time signals and electronic intelligence during operations in Idlib. Alongside these sit self-protection products including AKKOR, AKKOR KAMA and AKKOR PULAT, the anti-jam GNSS system KARETTA, the GNSS spoofing system BUKALEMUN, the naval ARES and AREAS 2 series and the ANTIDOT unmanned aircraft electronic warfare pods.

Steel Dome

The structural point is that KORAL II no longer stands alone. Steel Dome, or Celik Kubbe, approved on 6 August 2024 at the Defence Industry Executive Committee, is a multi-layered, network-centric, artificial-intelligence-supported air defence architecture led by ASELSAN with Roketsan, Havelsan, TUBITAK SAGE and MKE. Reference material lists KORAL, VURAL, REDET and PUHU among its electronic warfare and detection components alongside EIRS and ALP radars, with Siper, Hisar-A and Hisar-O, Sungur, Korkut, GOKSUR, Gokberk and EJDERHA as effectors. Steel Dome entered Turkish Armed Forces inventory on 27 August 2025 with an initial delivery of 47 pieces valued at 460 million dollars, followed by a 6.5 billion dollar procurement contract on 26 November 2025. ASELSAN describes the architecture as having physical, electromagnetic and cognitive layers; KORAL sits in the electromagnetic one. Akyol has said that 2025 production would be double that of 2024.

International Comparison

An honest comparison of KORAL II against its foreign peers starts by noting an asymmetry: the Turkish system is ground-based, while most of the famous Western standoff jammers are airborne. The closest true peers are Russia’s Krasukha family and Israel’s Scorpius-G.

United States

The EA-37B Compass Call, built on a Gulfstream G550 airframe with mission systems from L3Harris and BAE Systems, is designed to disrupt enemy command and control communications, radars and navigation, including in the SEAD role. The first operational aircraft was delivered on 23 August 2024 to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base; the US Air Force ordered ten, with five delivered as of May 2025, and Italy ordered two mission system packages. The first mission training sortie was flown on 2 May 2025 by the 43rd Electronic Combat Squadron. On 30 and 31 March 2026 two EA-37Bs flew from Davis-Monthan to RAF Mildenhall in what The Aviationist assessed as likely the type’s first operational deployment abroad, with reporting suggesting Turkey as a final destination in support of Operation Epic Fury, and linking the timing to Iranian strikes that damaged EC-130H Compass Call aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base. The Turkey destination is reported rather than confirmed. The carrier-capable EA-18G Growler occupies the escort and standoff jamming role at sea and is now receiving the Next Generation Jammer, with The Aviationist reporting on 22 April 2026 that Raytheon had confirmed delivery of pods for Australian Growlers.

Russia and China

The Krasukha-4, produced by KRET on a BAZ-6910-022 four-axle chassis, is a broadband multifunctional jamming station working in X and Ku bands, with a jamming range published as 300 km, targeting airborne early warning and battlefield surveillance aircraft, low-earth-orbit satellites and ground-based radars, and described as capable of causing permanent damage to radio-electronic devices. The Krasukha-2 works in S band with a 250 km published jamming range against airborne early warning aircraft. These are the standard open-source Russian claims and should be treated as such. Their credibility took a practical knock in March 2022, when a Krasukha-4 was captured by Ukrainian forces in a field near Kyiv and sent to the United States for examination, a reminder that systems of this class are seized, studied and countered. Russia’s Murmansk-BN, a strategic HF communications jamming system reportedly deployed in Ukraine, is functionally the analogue to ASELSAN’s SANCAK rather than to KORAL, and its very long claimed ranges are widely repeated but poorly verified.

China’s Y-9LG, also designated Y-8GX-12, is a long-range standoff jamming platform on the Shaanxi Y-8 and Y-9 four-turboprop airframe, which entered People’s Liberation Army Air Force service by early 2023 with the 20th Specialized Division’s 58th Air Regiment at Guiyang-Leizhuang. It carries a distinctive dorsal balance beam antenna, an enlarged nosecone, side fuselage ELINT and ESM fairings and satellite communications, was first identified in satellite imagery in late 2017 and was publicly visible during Exercise Falcon Strike with Thailand in August 2024. TWZ compares it functionally to the EA-37B and EC-130H and notes that its exact capabilities remain unknown. Chinese ground-based equivalents to KORAL are poorly documented in open sources, and it is more useful to say so than to speculate.

Israel, and where KORAL II stands

The direct peer is Scorpius, from IAI’s ELTA Systems, unveiled on 12 November 2021 and built on active electronically scanned arrays with gallium-nitride solid-state amplifiers enabling narrow, simultaneous multi-beam operation, the same technological direction ASELSAN describes for KORAL 100’s AESA beam steering. The family spans Scorpius-G for ground-based vehicle-mounted use, Scorpius-N for naval applications with conformal arrays, Scorpius-SP as an airborne self-protection pod, Scorpius EJ as an escort jammer creating protective corridors, and Scorpius-T as a land-based training and test emulator. IAI claims the ability to intercept, analyse, locate, track and jam fire control radars, search radars and synthetic aperture radar, to detect low-probability-of-intercept radars and to apply DRFM jamming, and it claims unprecedented range without publishing a figure, the same opacity ASELSAN maintains. The system is operational, with Asian orders reported in 2022 and a manufacturing partnership with India’s Bharat Electronics.

On the public record, KORAL 200 and Scorpius-G are the two most directly comparable ground-based multi-beam radar jammers outside Russia and China. Both are built on AESA with DRFM deception, both are marketed on simultaneous multi-emitter engagement, and both have manufacturers who decline to publish range figures. What distinguishes the Turkish system is that it has a publicly claimed combat record, contested but claimed, an export sale, and a place inside a declared national air defence architecture rather than a standalone existence.

Outlook

The near-term test for KORAL II and its production successor is delivery against Gorgun’s stated 2026 timeline, alongside ILGAR-II, the helicopter DIRCM fit and the ALP radar pair. If that package lands as announced, Turkey will have refreshed the electronic attack, self-protection and early warning layers of its air defence architecture in a single year, which is the simultaneous capability increase Gorgun described.

The wider trend is visible in ASELSAN’s own product line-up. The systems the company pushed hardest at SAHA EXPO 2026, EJDERHA, KANGAL FPV and a new ILGAR, are counter-drone and counter-FPV products, which is where the volume of electronic warfare work now sits. Akyol’s framing at that event was that modern battlefields require integrated solutions across both the electromagnetic spectrum and physical domains, and in the Defense One piece he named the trend directly, pointing to an accelerating shift toward low-emission doctrines, decentralised electronic-warfare-capable units and directed energy weapons to counter low-cost drone swarms. A high-power standoff jammer is the opposite of a low-emission system, which is precisely why the survivability lesson of Al-Watiya, and the discipline of displacement, will matter as much to KORAL II’s successors as raw output power.

Frequently Asked Questions About KORAL II

What is the difference between KORAL, KORAL 100, KORAL II and KORAL 200?

KORAL is the original system, delivered to the Turkish Air Force in February 2016 as the product of the Kara SOJ land-based standoff jammer project. KORAL 100 is the name ASELSAN used in its Newsletter No. 13 of October 2025 for the comprehensively modernised version of that original. KORAL/NG, KORAL II and KORAL 200 are the names attached to the new-generation system as it appeared in 2020, 2023 and 2025 respectively, each with its own official ASELSAN datasheet. Because the descriptive text on those three datasheets is essentially identical, the strong reading is that they are successive designations for one continuously developed product, with KORAL 200 the current production name. ASELSAN has not confirmed that reading, so it should be treated as an inference from the documents rather than an established fact.

What is the range of the KORAL II system?

ASELSAN has never published a detection or jamming range for KORAL II, KORAL/NG or KORAL 200, and no range figure appears on any of the three official datasheets. Third-party figures exist but do not agree: Radartutorial and Army Recognition put the effective range in excess of 150 km, RUSI and Daily Sabah give 150 to 200 km, and English Wikipedia gives 200 km. A much larger figure of roughly 450 to 500 km published by SavunmaSanayiST is explicitly labelled by that outlet as its own estimate read from a presentation graphic, not a specification. Any single range number presented as the manufacturer’s figure is not supported by the public record.

How is KORAL II operated and how many people does it need?

According to ASELSAN’s datasheets, the Operation Control Unit contains three multifunctional consoles and is worked by three people: an electronic support operator responsible for detection, analysis and direction finding; an electronic attack operator responsible for jamming, deception and resource allocation; and a supervisor who coordinates operations and communication between systems. The unit complies with NATO standards and provides nuclear, biological and chemical protection. The electronic support and electronic attack vehicles can be separated by up to 500 metres and linked by fibre-optic cable, according to Defence Turkey and Radartutorial. Reports of how many support and attack vehicles form a deployed unit conflict, with English Wikipedia describing four support systems to one attack system and SavunmaSanayiST describing the reverse.

Has the KORAL II family been used in combat?

Its use has been claimed repeatedly but never independently verified in detail. Commentators including Michael Tanchum in The Turkey Analyst, Can Kasapoglu of the Jamestown Foundation and Ali Bakir at RUSI have credited KORAL with enabling Turkish drone operations in Idlib in 2020 and with degrading air defences in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, and Turkish officials have stated that the system created ghost areas on Syrian and Russian radars. Reference material on Operation Spring Shield notes that these specific capability and effectiveness claims are not independently verified and that casualty figures diverge sharply. The clearest documented event involving the system runs the other way: on 4 July 2020, a KORAL was reportedly among the Turkish equipment destroyed in an airstrike on Al-Watiya Air Base in Libya, a reminder that a powerful emitter is also a target.