Tayfun

The missile that made Athens flinch — Roketsan's Tayfun ("Typhoon") is Turkey's longest-range ballistic missile, developed in secret and revealed when a 2022 test shot flew 561 kilometers down the Black Sea coast. In mass production since 2023, with Block-2 rounds now reaching the Turkish Special Forces Command and an enlarged Block-4 marketed as "Turkey's first hypersonic missile," the Tayfun is the sharpest expression of Ankara's push for national deep-strike power — and a program where the range figures run from an official ">280 km" to unverified talk of 1,500.

Overview

The Tayfun is a road-mobile, solid-fuel short-range ballistic missile built by state-owned Roketsan — the weapon that moved Turkey beyond the tactical Bora SRBM class and into ranges that reach deep across the Aegean, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The baseline missile is 6.5 m long and ~2.3 tonnes with a ~500 kg warhead; its demonstrated performance is the October 2022 reveal shot — 561 km in 456 seconds from Rize toward Sinop — while Roketsan's own datasheet coyly says only ">280 km" (the Missile Technology Control Regime export threshold) and open-source estimates run 500–800 km. Guidance is satellite-aided inertial with Turkish-official accuracy claims of ≤5 m CEP against fixed targets. Serial production began in May 2023; by June 2026 the Special Forces Command was accepting Block-2 batches on new launcher vehicles. The program's growth vector is the Block-4 unveiled at IDEF 2025: a ~10 m, ~7.2-tonne missile roughly three times the launch weight, marketed by Turkish officials as the country's first "hypersonic" missile — a label analysts at TWZ and elsewhere note describes ordinary ballistic terminal speed, not a maneuvering hypersonic weapon. Politically the Tayfun is inseparable from President Erdoğan's messaging — his December 2022 "it will hit Athens" remark drew a formal Greek protest — and from Turkey's open ambition, unusual inside NATO, to field 1,000–2,000 km-class national missiles.

Development

Turkey developed the Tayfun in secrecy on the foundation of Roketsan's Bora tactical missile (combat-fired against PKK targets in 2019, exported to Indonesia as "Khan"). The program surfaced involuntarily: the first test launch on 18–20 October 2022 from the Rize area was noticed by local press, and the Ministry of National Defence confirmed a 561 km flight in 456 seconds, per Middle East Eye and Forbes. Political framing arrived immediately — Erdoğan's Athens remark that December, then a 2023 vow to stretch range toward 1,000 km, per the Arms Control Association. A second successful test preceded mass production from 29 May 2023. A third test on 3 February 2025 from Rize-Artvin Airport hit a sea target off Sinop with reported ~5 m accuracy, per The Defense Post and Janes. At IDEF in July 2025 Roketsan unveiled the enlarged Block-4 — ~10 m, ~938 mm diameter, ~7,200 kg, pitched for destroying air-defense systems, command centers and hardened facilities, per Janes and TWZ — with an upgraded-Tayfun test following on 25 October 2025 and Block-4 mass production slated for 2026. In April 2026 Erdoğan opened ~$1 billion of new Roketsan production facilities, where the domestic DERMAN 8×8 launcher debuted; in late June 2026 the Special Forces Command completed acceptance of additional Block-2 missiles, per The Defense Post. Test-range geography constrains the program — hence reported plans to fire longer shots from Somalia.

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