IDEF 2025: Turkish Company FNSS Presents Kaplan FSRV
On July 22, the IDEF defense exposition in Istanbul opened its doors for the press and industry professionals. Perhaps the biggest premier of the event is Kaplan FSRV (Fire Support Reconnaissance Vehicle).
The experience of the ongoing war in Ukraine demonstrated that automatic cannons, for example, 25mm M242 can be quite effective even against heavily armored vehicles. For targets with lighter armor (for example armored cars and personal carriers) an autocannon is perhaps the most effective weapon. Kaplan FSRV is built around that concept.
The R&D department of FNSS combined the chassis of a medium tank with a turret called Teber-II. It allows to use three different guns: the primary one is 30mm MK44 autocannon, the secondary one is 7.62 MK52 chain gun or standard machine gun in the same caliber, the tertiary is 12.7 (.50 caliber) machine gun mounted above the autocannon. The FSRV is also equipped with two ATGMs from the Turkish manufacturer Roketsan with effective range of 8 kilometers.
For this vehicle, engineers of FNSS decided to use the proven chassis of the existing Kaplan MT medium tank that was jointly developed by Turkey and Indonesian defense manufacturer Pindad. It was developed under the Modern Medium Weight Tank (MMWT) program between 2015 and 2017. At the moment, the Indonesian army is using 18 tanks of that type.
One can say that the concept of Kaplan FSRV is close to the recently canceled US M110 ‘Booker’ tank, though with a smaller caliber main gun. However, while Booker was too heavy to fit on most military cargo planes, FSRV can be transported by Airbus A400M Atlas or Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, and two can fit onboard of C-17 Globemaster.
It is hard to predict the future of this vehicle, but the idea of combining a proven chassis with well tested turret seems to be a safe bet.