J-600T Yıldırım

Yıldırım I: 150 km Yıldırım II: 300 km

The J-600T Yıldırım (Thunderbolt) is a conventional battlefield ballistic missile system providing high mobility, designed to attack high-value targets such as enemy air defence installations, C3I centers, logistics and infrastructure facilities as well as providing fire support to friendly artillery by expanding the area of effect.

Turkey's cooperation with China and Pakistan for the joint development of ballistic missiles began in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The story of Project J, as well as Project Kasırga which preceded it, goes back to the first half of the 1990s, when negotiations for the technology transfer and production under license in Turkey of the American M-270 MLRS artillery rocket system failed. Turkey decided to seek for other alternatives, mainly focusing on full sovereignty over critical technologies in order to establish a self-sufficient national infrastructure for the design and development of guided missiles. After signing a contract for the licensed production of the Chinese WS-1A and WS-1B rockets under the name of Kasırga in 1997, a similar contract was signed with CPMIEC (Chinese Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation) for the Chinese B-611 SRBM system in 1998, covering the licensed production of a battery of B-611 with more than 200 missiles, at a reported cost of USD 300,000,000.

The J-600T design is based on the B-611 SRBM developed by CASIC (China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation) as a low cost tactical missile system, with a range of up to 250 km in improved versions such as the B-611M, and as a replacement for the M-11 (CSS-7 and DF-11) missiles in Chinese inventory. CPMIEC officials have confirmed at the IDEF 2007 military fair in Ankara that B-611M, the improved version of B-611, was not a part of the Sino-Turkish cooperation program.

Turkey's Roketsan has been assigned with the task of improving the range, performance and design of the J-600T, and is conducting studies on alternatives such as a sealed pod launcher box design, improved propellant, improved GCU and different types of warhead configurations.

Roketsan is reportedly working on an improved version of J-600T, details of which are highly speculative for the moment. Given that the system was first revealed to the public more than 7 years of its introduction to service, it can be expected that information about the improved version, if there is any, is going to remain secret for some time.