Turkey’s aviation industry has unveiled a standoff jammer and an electronic attack aircraft — a niche platform that could dramatically enhance Ankara’s air power and electronic warfare capabilities.
The aircraft, known as the Hava Stand-Off Jammer (SOJ), was recently spotted in a video published by the Turkish Ministry of Defense (MoD) on its official X account to mark the 115th anniversary of the Turkish Air Force’s founding. The video offers the best view of the aircraft so far, compared to the low-quality images seen earlier this year.
The video comes weeks after a pixelated image of the HAVA SOJ surfaced in March 2026 during a test flight from the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) facility in Ankara.
The Hava SOJ is seen in the footage with a nose-mounted air-data probe visible, a common test instrumentation feature used during certification and flight-envelope expansion. Moreover, the aircraft is unpainted and still sports its factory primer, indicating that it was likely captured on camera during pre-delivery trials.
This is the clearest signal yet that this dedicated Turkish EW attack aircraft is poised to enter service soon, expanding the country’s aviation industry, which has received widespread recognition in recent years for developing advanced unmanned systems, including the TB2, TB3, Akinci, and the Kizilelma, the Hurjet advanced trainer, and is currently developing the fifth-generation KAAN fighter.
The induction of HAVA SOJ into the Turkish Air Force will represent Ankara’s shift from relying on tactical electronic support to becoming one of the few nations equipped to conduct independent stand-off electromagnetic warfare operations at strategic depth. Only a few countries have comparable capability. For example, the US has the EA-37B Compass Call, whereas China has a dedicated Y-9 electronic attack aircraft.
The Hava SOJ has been designed to suppress hostile air-defense surveillance systems in the SEAD/DEAD (suppression/destruction of enemy air defenses) roles.
ASELSAN ve TUSAŞ işbirliği ile geliştirilen ASOJ 23-A (eski adıyla HAVA SOJ) Elektronik Harp Uçağı, uçuş testi sırasında fotoğraflandı.
Uçağın bu yıl envantere girmesi bekleniyor. pic.twitter.com/5nVHNVpJFY
— Avionot (@avionot) March 1, 2026
The Turkish Presidency of Defense Industries, popularly known as SSB, states that the program includes four operational aircraft, along with related squadron infrastructure, mission-planning facilities, specialized hangars, and training facilities supporting the long-term development of the Turkish Air Force’s electronic warfare (EW) doctrine.
What Do We Know About HAVA SOJ?
According to Turkish defense officials, the Turkish Air Force had been seeking an airborne stand-off electronic attack capability for more than 20 years before the Hava SOJ project was formally launched. The effort was based on the need to suppress enemy air defenses, jam hostile radars and communications, and support deep-strike operations without exposing fighters to high-risk air-defense zones.
In the late 2000s, for instance, Turkey and Aselsan began developing a domestic substitute for the Turkish Air Force’s standoff jamming capability based on the Transall C-160 turboprop transport. However, since the program was taking longer than expected, an interim solution called “Golge” was briefly considered but eventually abandoned by 2017, paving the way for the HAVA SOJ.
Hava SOJ (Hava Stand-Off Jammer), developed together by Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) and Aselsan, is classified as Turkey’s next-generation airborne electronic warfare (EW) aircraft, primarily designed to neutralize enemy air defenses.
The true inception of the modern HAVA SOJ program came on 9 August 2018, when the SSB signed the project contract with ASELSAN.
Subsequently, the Bombardier Global 6000 long-range business jet platform was selected as the airframe, and Turkey secured delivery of the first two jets by 2019 to reconfigure them as standoff jammers.
The Hava SOJ is designed to suppress adversary air defense radars, disrupt command-and-control cycles, and interfere with communications through deception and noise jamming.
The aircraft conducts electronic support and jamming missions without entering hostile territory, creating protective “electronic corridors” for fighter jets and unmanned aircraft.
“Standoff Jamming (SOJ) platforms are high-value assets that suppress adversary air defense radars, disrupt command and control cycles, and interfere with communications by conducting deception and noise jamming from long ranges without entering hostile airspace. By doing so, they create corridors through which friendly air forces can penetrate enemy airspace. The effective employment of these platforms has become an undeniable reality of modern warfare, acting as a force multiplier and generating powerful asymmetric effects,” states the SSB.
In essence, the platform can jam radars, disrupt communications, break enemy data links, and create an electronic bubble where enemy missiles and surveillance systems become useless. It is reportedly capable of jamming enemy radars and communications at ranges exceeding 500 kilometers.
The previous images of the aircraft depicted a large, canoe-like faring with long, dome-shaped dorsal antennas and antenna blades running along the underbelly and spine, potentially housing an array.
Notably, the Hava SOJ is expected to include a defensive aids suite, a communications and tactical datalink package, radar, and communications electronic support/electronic attack subsystems, and a mission management subsystem.
TAI was purportedly responsible for “Group-A structural modification designs” for the Bombardier Global 6000, including internal and external modifications such as the Electrical Power Distribution System (EPDS), the Cooling System, and detailed component manufacturing, modification, assembly, and system integration.
Aseslan, on its part, is reportedly supplying essential mission hardware, software, and unique algorithms.
The mission systems onboard the aircraft are designed to perform detection, identification, recognition, classification, direction-finding, and positioning of complex land, air, and sea radar and communications emissions. All of these are being developed domestically.
Although not much information has been made public, it is believed to be based on Aselsan’s Koral/Kara SOJ land-based electronic support/attack suite, which is installed on two heavy-duty vehicles. These could be used to jam radars and other radio-frequency sensors and emitters in the air, on land, and at sea by emitting highly concentrated electromagnetic radiation beams.
According to reports, ASELSAN’s electronic warfare suite incorporates advanced direction-finding architecture, active electronically scanned array technologies, high-power systems, and resilience against data links, frequency-hopping communications, and direct-sequence spread-spectrum transmission methods—all of which are becoming increasingly common in modern air defense networks.
The aircraft’s integrated test flights with mission systems indicate significant progress, as the effectiveness of airborne electronic warfare largely depends on software integration, signal-processing speed, cooling efficiency, and electromagnetic compatibility between mission systems and aircraft power infrastructure.
The aircraft is reportedly equipped with sophisticated ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) sensors to identify and evaluate hostile radar signatures, and passive antennae beneath the aircraft’s nose collect electronic intelligence. Meanwhile, SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) antennas are positioned ahead of the main landing gear to collect signals.
The system integrates electronic reconnaissance capabilities that allow the aircraft to scan, detect, identify, and respond to threats all in milliseconds.
The Hava SOJ reportedly features advanced jamming systems developed by Aselsan, including wideband radar jammers that can target multiple threat emitters simultaneously, including modern air defense radars and communication links. The operational range for effective jamming exceeds 500 km against typical fighter radars and surface-to-air missile guidance systems, allowing the aircraft to operate beyond the radar and weapon engagement ranges of enemy air defenses.
This standoff capability allows the aircraft to blind enemy radars and disrupt communications from safe distances without entering denied territory.
Besides suppressing air defenses, the Hava SOJ can degrade, deny, and interfere with various types of adversary communications, wreaking havoc on the enemy’s command-and-control system and data-sharing architecture, and reducing the capacity of adversary commanders to cooperate and make effective decisions.
This is a revolutionary capability, given that modern integrated air defense systems increasingly depend on interconnected radar, command-and-control, and digital communications architectures that are susceptible to coordinated electromagnetic disruption rather than just kinetic destruction.
With this project, the Turkish Air Force Command will gain indigenous electronic warfare capabilities, retaining systems developed domestically rather than relying on foreign suppliers. In a strict operational sense, the HAVA SOJ will be able to protect Turkish and allied fighter jets and drones by creating electronic corridors in contested airspace, representing a pivotal leap in Turkey’s electronic warfare capabilities.
- Contact the author at sakshi.tiwari13 (at) outlook.com
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