EFES 2026 – More Zahas and PARS Scout for the Turkish Navy, Land Forces and Gendarmerie

The signature of two contracts at SAHA Expo, two weeks ago, will see the Turkish Navy receiving a second batch of Zaha marine assault vehicles, and the Land Forces and Gendarmerie considerably increasing the number of their PARS 6×6 and 8×8 in different versions

In an exercise which sees a beach assault starting at night and continuing the next morning FNSS Zaha marine assault vehicle is by definition one of the stars. The vehicles get to the beach and continue penetrating on land, carrying their 18 Marines plus the three crew members, their Çaka turrets armed with heavy machine guns and grenade launchers providing covering fire. EDR On-Line understands that the contract signed two weeks ago at the Istanbul exhibition will cover the same number and vehicles variants of the first contract; 23 armoured personnel carriers, two recovery vehicles and two command post vehicles. Once the vehicles were delivered FNSS continued to keep a close relationship with the Turkish Navy amphibious troops, and to receive their reports.

This of course generated some lessons learned, mostly aimed at making the vehicle more user-friendly. This will not impact production and will not require any structural change. The new batch will also see the adoption of some new subsystems, to solve obsolescence issues, while other subcomponents that were imported are now replaced with systems of Turkish origin, further increasing the national content of the vehicle.

The second contract signed at SAHA Expo was related to the Special Purpose Tactical Wheeled Armoured Vehicles programme which includes both 8×8 and 6×6 platforms. The first batch ordered was for a total of 100 vehicles, roughly equally split between 6×6 and 8×8, the latter in the command post and radar carrier configurations, while the bigger vehicles were produced in the combat version for the Jandarma and in the CBRN recce version for the Land Forces. No detailed split was provided. The second batch will cover a much greater number of vehicles, the split between the 3-axle and the 4-axle version remaining quite similar.

To cope with this and other important incoming contracts FNSS is doubling its production capacity, with heavy investments in its Ankara facility. It is also modifying its supply chain, to allow it to support the increase from 100 to 200 vehicles to be produced each year. The project has already started and the company is planning to complete it by late 2026, early 2027.

Photos by P. Valpolini