President of Defence Industry Agency (SSB) Professor İsmail Demir announced on his Twitter account that STM defence completed the KERKES Project, which enables UAVs to operate in GPS-denied areas. STM started “the Global Positioning System Independent Autonomous Navigation System Development (KERKES) Project” in 2019.
emir said on his account, “We have completed and delivered the KERKES Project, which enables our UAVs to operate in GPS-denied environments. With this technology, which only a few countries in the world are working on, our mini-UAVs will perform their duties without being affected by electronic warfare threats such as GPS jamming. This critical capability we have brought to our country will be both a deterrent for our army in homeland security and game-changing technology in the combat environment.”
STM General Manager Özgür Güleryüz stated that KERKES and UAVs would perform their duties without being affected by electronic warfare threats and said, “In the lack of communication, location estimation will be made by processing the data and images gathered from the sensors. Artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques will determine the target, and we will be able to hit the target. We obtained these skill sets thanks to the KERKES Project. We can adapt the capacity to other mini/micro, tactical or operational UAV systems. We evaluate that it is possible to integrate this capability into land and naval platforms. We are always ready to meet all the advanced technology needs of our military in the field.”
Rotary and fixed-wing UAVs are used on the battlefield and provide a fast and secure attack. They need global satellite navigation systems (GNSS), especially global positioning systems (GPS). It is known that GPS and RF access can often be interrupted or jammed on the battlefield. This makes it difficult for UAVs to perform missions.
