Gökberk sits inside Turkey's layered Çelik Kubbe (Steel Dome) air defense architecture, occupying the short-range, counter-UAS point-defense layer alongside systems like the Aselsan İHTAR jammer suite and the Aselsan Korkut 100/25 SB gun system.^11,12 The weapon's job is narrow and specific, intercepting mini and micro drones, FPV racing-style kamikaze drones, and improvised explosive devices at ranges of roughly 600 to 1,500 meters, protecting fixed sites such as airports, power plants, border outposts, and military headquarters, plus convoys on the move.^1,4

As of mid-2026, Gökberk remains a pre-inventory system. Aselsan's own chief executive described the newer Gökberk 10 variant in May 2026 as still approaching, not yet at, formal inventory entry,¹¹ which means the original 5 kW Gökberk covered by this article should also be read as a fielding-track system rather than a combat-proven one. No confirmed export sale or foreign operator has been reported, though Aselsan has stated it can offer the system to allied countries.³ Unlike the Roketsan-built ALKA, a rival Turkish laser weapon that already has a confirmed combat kill to its name, Gökberk's record so far is confined to controlled test ranges.

Aselsan's Gökberk mobile laser weapon system combines three subsystems on a single 6x6 wheeled chassis, a search-and-track sensor package, a laser emitter for hard-kill effects, and a radio-frequency jammer for soft-kill effects.^1,5 The heart of the weapon is a 5 kW single-mode laser source, developed in cooperation with TÜBİTAK BİLGEM (a Turkish state research institute distinct from the defense-industry TÜBİTAK institute that partners on other Aselsan programs), and prized for its high beam quality rather than raw power.⁷

Detection and tracking run through a mix of radar, an electro-optical camera, and a thermal imaging camera, with artificial-intelligence software handling automatic target recognition so the crew does not have to manually classify every contact.^1,5 A focusing unit lets the beam concentrate its energy out to roughly 2,000 meters, though the effective drone-kill range is shorter, cited at around 1,500 meters against small quadcopter-type drones and about 1,200 meters against fixed-wing UAVs.^4,7 In one publicized demonstration, the laser burned through a 6mm steel sheet at 600 meters, a rough proxy for how much thermal energy actually reaches the target at that distance.⁴

Gökberk's low power rating is a deliberate engineering trade-off rather than a shortfall. A lower-power beam takes longer to inflict a kill, which raises the premium on precise, sustained beam pointing, but it also draws less electricity and needs a far less demanding cooling system than a 50 kW-class weapon.⁶ Analysts have noted that Gökberk does not always need to physically destroy a target outright to achieve a kill. Even a brief dose of thermal energy can fog or crack a drone's onboard camera lens, which is often enough to blind a remotely piloted FPV drone and force its operator to lose control, without necessarily burning through the airframe itself.⁶ The jamming half of the system, referred to in Aselsan literature as the Kangal jammer subsystem, provides an electronic soft-kill path that disrupts a drone's control or video link as a backup or complement to the laser.^1,7

Compared with the Roketsan-built ALKA, Gökberk sits at the low end of the power spectrum among Turkish directed-energy weapons.

Aselsan first showed Gökberk to the public at IDEF 2023, the 16th International Defence Industry Fair held in Istanbul from July 25 to July 28, 2023. The company announced the reveal on social media with the line Lazer silahı GÖKBERK hazır (the laser weapon GÖKBERK is ready), describing a 6x6-mounted system able to search, detect, and track drones using radar and electro-optical sensors.^1,13 At that stage Gökberk was presented as a demonstrator, one entry in a broader Aselsan roadmap of laser weapons at different power tiers for different threat profiles, alongside plans for modular laser turrets to be integrated into a distributed air-defense architecture.¹

The next major milestone came on March 10, 2025, when Aselsan announced that Gökberk had been tested against FPV drones and had successfully detected, autonomously tracked, and neutralized threats across multiple scenarios, including in adverse weather conditions.^2,3 Aselsan CEO Ahmet Akyol discussed the wider Çelik Kubbe (Steel Dome) program at the Abu Dhabi defense expo the following month, calling it a very promising system that every nation wants and saying Aselsan could offer the solution immediately to Turkey and to allied countries.³

Turkey's wider Çelik Kubbe (Steel Dome) air defense program, which Gökberk feeds into as a short-range layer, was formally approved by Turkey's Defense Industry Executive Committee on August 6, 2024, and entered the Turkish Armed Forces' inventory as an overall architecture on August 27, 2025.¹⁰ Aselsan secured a further $1.9 billion contract with Turkey's defense procurement authority in September 2025, and a €780 million ($900 million) follow-on Steel Dome contract in June 2026 covering deliveries scheduled between 2028 and 2032, though Aselsan has not specified whether Gökberk units are included in that particular tranche.¹²

Gökberk itself, as a standalone weapon, had not been confirmed as formally inducted into service as of mid-2026, a distinction worth keeping separate from the wider Steel Dome program's own in-service date, since a multi-system architecture of this size can bring its component weapons into inventory in stages rather than all at once.

Aselsan has since expanded the Gökberk line into higher-power variants rather than replacing the original 5 kW system outright. Gökberk 10, unveiled at SAHA Expo 2026 in Istanbul in May 2026, doubles output to 10 kW and extends the beam's focusing range to between 150 and 2,000 meters, aimed at the same urban and critical-infrastructure protection role but with a faster kill against tougher targets.^11,14 CEO Ahmet Akyol described Gökberk 10 as having already been applied successfully in scenarios involving urban centers, factories, and other facilities where limiting collateral damage mattered, and said the system was still counting down to entering inventory as of the SAHA 2026 unveiling.¹¹

A third tier, a Gökberk 20 kW variant, is reported as part of Turkey's DRONDEF counter-drone layer within the wider Steel Dome architecture, though sourcing on this specific variant is thinner than for the base system and Gökberk 10, and it should be treated as less firmly confirmed.¹⁰ Across all three power tiers, Aselsan has kept the core architecture consistent, a 6x6-mobile or fixed-site laser emitter paired with electro-optical sensors, radar cueing, and the Kangal jammer for soft-kill backup, while scaling the raw laser power and focusing range upward.^10,11

Turkey is the only country associated with Gökberk, and even there the system had not been confirmed as formally in service as of mid-2026, sitting instead in an advanced testing and pre-induction phase tied to the wider Çelik Kubbe Steel Dome rollout.^3,11

Aselsan CEO Ahmet Akyol has publicly floated export availability, telling reporters at the Abu Dhabi defense expo that Aselsan could supply the system to allied nations immediately,³ but no confirmed foreign buyer, trial, or export contract for Gökberk had been reported by mid-2026.

Within Turkey, Gökberk is one part of a much larger indigenous air-defense buildout. The Çelik Kubbe program groups Gökberk alongside missile layers such as Aselsan SİPER for longer-range interception, gun-based systems like the Aselsan Korkut 100/25 SB, and the Aselsan İHTAR jammer and radar suite for wide-area drone detection, all built primarily by Aselsan with contributions from other Turkish state defense firms.^10,12

Gökberk's closest domestic rival is not another Aselsan product but a competing weapon from a different Turkish state manufacturer entirely. Roketsan, a separate defense company from Aselsan, fields the ALKA directed-energy weapon, first unveiled at IDEF 2019 and already credited with the first confirmed combat kill by a vehicle-mounted laser weapon, downing a Chinese-made Wing Loong II drone over Misrata, Libya, in August 2019.⁹ That single fact reframes the comparison. ALKA is the system with an actual battlefield record, while Gökberk, despite entering development and testing later, remains confined to range trials as of mid-2026.

The two systems also target different problems. ALKA's disclosed laser power has grown across hardware generations, from roughly 2.5 kW at its 2019 debut to over 10 kW in Roketsan statements by 2026, paired with a detection and jamming envelope reported as reaching up to 4,000 meters and 1,000 meters respectively in later configurations, and a sensor suite Roketsan says can track up to 100 simultaneous targets moving as fast as 150 km/h.^7,8,15 Gökberk's fixed 5 kW laser has a shorter disclosed detection footprint but a comparable reported kill range against individual quadcopter and fixed-wing drones, at 1,200 to 1,500 meters, because it leans on precision beam-pointing and the camera-fogging soft-kill effect rather than sheer thermal output.^4,6 In practice, ALKA reads as the more mature, swarm-oriented weapon with genuine combat pedigree and a multi-generation power increase already fielded, while Gökberk reads as the newer, lower-power point-defense weapon still proving itself in test scenarios, a difference that maps onto why Turkey is funding both programs rather than picking one.

Set against non-Turkish laser weapons, Gökberk's 5 kW rating looks modest. The US Army's DE M-SHORAD system runs at roughly 50 kW, ten times Gökberk's output, yet Turkish test claims put Gökberk's reported kill ranges against small drones in a similar bracket to systems several times more powerful.⁶ Whether that holds up against faster, more maneuverable, or armored targets than the commercial-style quadcopters and FPV drones used in Aselsan's public tests is not yet demonstrated, and independent verification of Turkish test results has not been published outside Aselsan's own statements and allied trade press coverage.^2,3

What is the Aselsan Gökberk laser weapon system? Gökberk is a mobile, 6x6 vehicle-mounted directed-energy weapon built by Aselsan, Turkey's largest state defense electronics manufacturer, designed to detect, track, and destroy small drones with a combination of a laser and an electronic jammer.^1,5

How powerful is the Gökberk laser weapon system? The original Gökberk uses a 5 kilowatt laser source, with reported engagement ranges of around 1,200 to 1,500 meters against drones. A newer Gökberk 10 variant doubles that to 10 kilowatts.^4,11

Is Gökberk in service with the Turkish military? As of mid-2026, Gökberk had not been confirmed as formally inducted into Turkish Armed Forces inventory. Aselsan's CEO described the related Gökberk 10 variant in May 2026 as still approaching, not yet at, formal inventory entry.¹¹

How does Gökberk compare to the ALKA laser weapon? ALKA, built by rival Turkish firm Roketsan, has grown from a 2.5 kW laser at its 2019 debut to over 10 kW by 2026, has a longer disclosed detection range, and has a confirmed 2019 combat kill against a drone in Libya. Gökberk's 5 kW laser has so far only been demonstrated in controlled tests, not combat.^9,15

What is Gökberk's role in Turkey's Steel Dome air defense system? Gökberk occupies the short-range, counter-drone layer of Turkey's Çelik Kubbe (Steel Dome) architecture, working alongside gun, jammer, and missile systems to protect fixed sites and convoys from small UAV threats.^10,12