Nigerian Air Force Chief Air Marshal Hasan Bala Abubakar on September 23, 2025 hosted ASELSAN’s President and CEO Ahmet Akyol at headquarters.
Their discussions zeroed in on radar enhancements, air defence fortifications, and precision strike tools, framing a partnership that promises to sharpen the NAF’s response to the Sahel’s relentless insurgencies. Abubakar, steering the force toward agility and endurance, praised ASELSAN’s track record in electronics as a perfect match for Nigeria’s demands, where quick-reaction strikes against mobile jihadist cells in Borno or Zamfara demand unflinching accuracy.
The talks built on a rapport that has matured over the years, with Abubakar outlining how these integrations would elevate mission outcomes while shielding civilian populations in volatile zones. Radar arrays for early warning, anti-drone countermeasures to neutralise unmanned threats, and guided munitions for surgical hits all align with his vision of a force that dominates the battlespace without excess force. Akyol, in turn, voiced ASELSAN’s eagerness to supply avionics refreshes and layered defences, positioning Nigeria as a linchpin in Turkey’s African outreach. Their exchange, laced with mutual respect, capped a quarter of milestones that trace back to foundational diplomacy.
Just weeks earlier, in August 2025, ASELSAN planted its flag in Abuja with a dedicated office, a calculated expansion from its decade-old South African foothold. Incorporated in June, this outpost equips the firm to tailor offerings for West Africa’s hotspots, where porous borders and asymmetric warfare call for plug-and-play solutions. From countering Boko Haram remnants to fortifying naval patrols in the Gulf of Guinea, the base facilitates on-site demos and swift logistics, easing the path for NAF squadrons juggling stretched resources. This step mirrors ASELSAN’s continental playbook: embed locally, transfer know-how, and cultivate ecosystems that let partners like Nigeria maintain fleets with minimal external crutches.
The momentum traces to May 22-23, when ASELSAN turned heads at the fourth African Air Forces Forum in Lagos, parading gear primed for NAF’s toolkit. The ASELFIRE-500 electro-optical pod stole the spotlight, a 15-inch turret packing a 3-5 micron high-resolution infrared camera for thermal detection out to 20 kilometres, an 8-megapixel daylight TV lens for visual ID, and a short-wave infrared unit for haze-piercing scans; it doubles as a laser ranger and designator, feeding coordinates to munitions for hits within 10 meters circular error probable. Mounted on platforms like the NAF’s Embraer A-29 Super Tucano or even rotary-wing Alpha Jets, this system transforms patrols into proactive hunts, spotting vehicle convoys in dust-choked ravines before they scatter.
Precision munitions rounded out the exhibit, starting with the TOLUN-202 BR, a GPS/INS-guided rocket that slips four per pod on lightweight racks, each 70-millimetre warhead packing 2 kilograms of explosive for sequential strikes on clustered targets like training camps or supply depots. At 7 kilometres range, it thrives in contested airspace, where NAF pilots dodge man-portable air defences from Islamic State in the Greater Sahara factions. Complementing it, the Gözde kit retrofits 500-pound general-purpose bombs into all-weather smart weapons, blending inertial navigation with satellite cues to nail moving assets like technicals at 15 kilometres, as proven in F-16 trials that clocked bullseyes on high-speed mockups. For laser-designated drops, the LGK-82 kit upgrades MK-82 dumb bombs with a seeker head that locks onto ground spots from 8 kilometres, slashing dud rates to under 1 per cent and conserving ordnance in prolonged ops against Jamā’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin holdouts.
Cockpit innovations drew pilots’ eyes too, with the TULGAR helmet-mounted display projecting 40-degree field colour symbology onto visors, overlaying air traffic, system diagnostics, and night-vision feeds for split-second decisions in dogfights or low-level runs. Integrated with inertial nav and flight data, it cuts pilot workload by funnelling radar locks and weapon cues directly to the head-turn, a boon for NAF’s mixed fleet facing electronic jamming in the Lake Chad Basin. ASELSAN’s booth extended to C4I networks for seamless command loops, electronic warfare jammers to spoof drone swarms, and radars like the low-band EIRS for over-the-horizon scans, all wired to knit air defense webs that span Nigeria’s 923,000 square kilometers.
These wares resonate amid the Sahel’s 2025 surge, where ISSP and JNIM exploits claimed over 5,000 lives in the first half, spilling into Benin and Togo while taxing NAF’s 150 combat sorties monthly. Boko Haram’s drone raids on Maiduguri bases exposed gaps in detection, prompting Abubakar’s June civilian harm plan that mandates precision to spare villages in crossfire. ASELSAN’s stack addresses this head-on: FLIR pods enable standoff ID to avoid false positives, while guided kits trim collateral by factors of ten over unguided drops, aligning with UNOWAS calls for measured force in multinational hunts.
The Abuja forum wasn’t mere showmanship; it brought deals, with ASELSAN courting chiefs from Ghana to Ethiopia on weaving these into joint exercises. For Nigeria, it echoed deeper roots. Back in January 2022, the fifth Turkey-Nigeria Defence Industry Consultation drew TUSAŞ, Roketsan, Aselsan and peers to pitch drones, helos, and infantry gear, evolving from Ambassador Hidayet Bayraktar’s August 2021 overture to Army Chief Lt Gen Faruk Yahaya and Defence Minister Bashir Magashi. Those sessions, under Savunma Sanayii Başkanlığı auspices, locked in counter-terror pacts, seeding talks on armed UAVs like the Bayraktar TB2 that now patrol Nigeria’s northeast. In 2022, Nigeria and Turkey furthered talks on defence collaboration in counter-terrorism support as well as the acquisition of various military hardware, which may include attack helicopters, armed drones, and other infantry systems.
By mid-2025, these threads tightened. ASELSAN’s Oman office complemented Abuja’s, but Nigeria’s scale drew priority; the firm’s AI-driven efficiency gains, touted in quarterly reports, promise to streamline NAF maintenance on legacy MiG-21s or new Leonardo M-346 trainers. Tech transfers could localise assembly, echoing Turkey’s model with Pakistan, and free budgets for fleet growth amid fiscal squeezes.
Forward, this alliance equips NAF to pivot from reactive firefights to domain control. Radars will knit a persistent eye over the Sahel’s blind spots, while precision arms will dismantle networks without destroying villages, and defences will blunt the drone tide, eroding ground gains.
