Turkey unveils new ICBM — touted as able to hit the US mainland

Turkey’s grand unveiling of an intercontinental ballistic missile has backfired after an AI-generated promotional video showed the weapon seeming to strike its US ally.

The Yıldırımhan missile was presented at a defence expo in Istanbul this week as capable of travelling 6,000km carrying a 3,000kg warhead at up to 25 times the speed of sound — placing Turkey among a small group of countries able to develop such weapons.

But questions quickly arose about the real capabilities of the system, sparked by the AI video showing the Yıldırımhan hitting nuclear facilities and other targets that appeared to be in the US.

The Americas would be well beyond the official range of the missile — and Turkish officials later admitted a working prototype of the Yıldırımhan had yet to be built for full testing.

Turkey has been eager to showcase its military prowess ahead of a critical Nato leaders’ summit in Ankara this July. At the same time, the US-Israeli war with Iran has deepened Turkey’s ambition to increase its military deterrence amid a region wracked with conflict.

“We intend to use it solely for deterrence purposes,” defence minister Yaşar Güler said at a launch event for the missile on Tuesday. “However, should the need arise, let no one doubt that we will deploy it without hesitation and in the most effective manner,” he added.

There was no indication that Güler was aware that the video appeared to include targets in North America.

Despite the fanfare, defence officials, industry representatives and military analysts soon questioned the true capabilities of the 18-metre-long missile.

“It’s an overestimation. Turkey’s defence industry has many capabilities, and is improving fast, but it’s not yet at this level,” said one western defence official.

“It seems very ambitious and questionable,” added Fabian Hoffman, a missile expert at the University of Oslo.

Within days of unveiling the missile, Turkey’s ministry of defence clarified that the system was still in a testing phase. “Laboratory testing of the Yıldırımhan missile system, which has a warhead payload capacity of 3 tonnes, has been successfully completed, and field testing is proceeding,” it said on Thursday.

Turkey’s booming defence industry has turned it into the world’s 11th biggest arms exporter and a key partner in Europe’s need to re-arm itself. While Europe has struggled to supply Ukraine and replenish depleted defence stocks, Turkish armoured vehicles, warships, drones and munitions have rolled off factory production lines.

Key Nato allies such as the UK and Germany have described Turkey’s industrial capacity as essential to the defence of Europe.

Baykar, chaired by Selçuk Bayraktar, the son-in-law of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is one of the world’s leaders in artificial intelligence-enabled drone manufacturing and a joint venture partner with Italy’s Leonardo. Spain last year acquireded 30 Hürjet planes from Turkish Aerospace to train its combat pilots in partnership with Airbus.

Turkey has also prioritised making a broad array of ballistic and cruise missiles “for deterrence and, should that fail, for war”, defence analysts Sıtkı Egeli and Arda Mevlütoğlu wrote in a recent paper for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.  

However, Yıldırımhan’s alleged properties lie far beyond current capabilities, analysts said.

Turkey’s longest-range missile is currently the Tayfun, built by state-backed Roketsan, according to defence analyst Murat Gürgen. It has reached 600km in test launches, only a tenth of the Yıldırımhan’s declared 6,000km range.