Turkiye's first air defence warfare destroyer, TF-2000, is currently designed at the Design Project Office (DPO) located at Istanbul Shipyard Command.The Ministry of National Defence opened the doors of the Istanbul Shipyard Command to the press and exhibited its facilities and capabilities. The command has multiple capabilities. While the ship design at the command occurs at DPO, the ship is built in the dry dock. In the remaining parts of the shipyard, ship production and maintenance of the systems to be used on the ship take place. For example, the maintenance of engines and weapons used on ships is still carried out on-site. Turkiye primarily needs an air defence destroyer for TCG Anadolu and the Aircraft Carrier it will build in the future. The Navy calculated the future battlefield and determined the requirements for air defence warfare destroyers. The sensors and weapon systems that will be on the ship for the task group it will protect were not discussed as they were not the subject of this visit. One of the most important stages of the visit was to see the design and construction capabilities for TF-2000, the construction of which is expected to start soon with the decision of the Defence Industry Executive Committee (SSİK).
DPO is responsible for designing and simulating other naval projects like the MİLGEM and TF2000 destroyers with its capabilities. TF-2000 is designed to have a wide operational range and an unrestricted speed of 26+ knots to accompany the task group for which it will provide air protection. One of the most important issues during the design phase is to keep the ship stealthy. In this context, many studies are being conducted to reduce traces, such as underwater acoustic signatures and surface IR. Some noteworthy studies among these are as follows: There will be two propellers on the ship. These propellers were designed at DPO. The hydrodynamic efficiency of the propellers is also checked by analysis. These results are compared and improved at the Istanbul Technical University Cavitation Tunnel (İTÜKAT). In DPO, propellers are designed as silent propellers. For example, by making the leading-edge flow face of the propeller twisted, cavitation in the rudder was eliminated even at the ship's maximum speed. This is a first in the literature. Precautions such as superstructure cooling system and suppression system will be taken to reduce the IR signature outside the ship, and enclosing the machinery in acoustic capsules will be provided to reduce acoustic signal. Thus, this ship will have a higher stealth rate than the Ada-Class corvettes and İstif-Class frigates. The ship will be able to operate uninterruptedly even in sea state five conditions. The Sea State is evaluated on ten levels, with zero being the calmest and nine being the phenomenal. When the sea state is 5, the wavelength reaches a height of 2.5 to 4 m. TF-2000 will also include important innovations in survivability. The double bulkhead application is implemented for the first time in TF-2000. Thus, an explosion does not spread to another compartment. It was not implemented before TF-2000. This office carried out the first study on resistance to external and internal explosions in Turkiye. Thus, the ships become shockproof. This is the biggest difference between military ships and commercial ships. The command will construct the ships. The shipyard has a 300-meter-long dry dock, which is currently divided into two by an iron curtain. On the one hand, the Savarona yacht, where Ataturk spent the last 54 days of his life, is being restored; on the other hand, the work of a Babur class ship built for the Pakistan Navy and the Hisar class Koçhisar OPV continues. All these three ships will leave the dry dock before the construction of the TF-2000 ship begins. The shipyard is confident in this regard for many reasons. The most important of these is that there have been no notable work and worker safety accidents. Secondly, high accuracy in business planning provides a significant advantage. For example, work hour calculations for the construction of the TCG Istanbul F-515 have been met at almost 100 per cent. On the other hand, facilities have been established to ensure that the institutions and organizations working on the ship coordinate.
