President of Defence Industries (SSB) Professor İsmail Demir stated that they are working on the submarine Launched version of Atmaca at the TEKNOFEST 2021 Rocket Competition.
Demir stated that they are conducting research and development studies for naval forces. “A cruise missile that can be launched from a submarine, where there is a case of using rocket engines. Then they will be transformed into cruise missiles; There are works to form an infrastructure,” Demir said.
The preliminary studies of submarine-launched Atmaca missiles will be
fired from the torpedo tube. The Atmaca will be thrown in the torpedo capsule,
and it will reach the surface. The ATMACA, on the surface, will separate from
the capsule and fire and head towards the target surface platform.
Atmaca has many similarities with US Harpoon. The US deployed the short-range Harpoon anti-ship missile on submarines beginning in 1981.
How do submarines launch cruise missiles?
Early designs of cruise missiles required the submarines to surface to launch the missiles. Later designs, on the other hand, could do so underwater through the use of dedicated vertical launching system (VLS) tubes. Modern attack submarines are equipped with torpedo tubes that can fire cruise missiles (and dedicated anti-ship missiles) from their torpedo tubes. Some designs also include a small number of VLS canisters, resulting in significant overlap between cruise missile submarines and traditional attack submarines in terms of capability.
