Missile Debut: At the IDEF 2025 international defense show in Istanbul, Turkish defense company Roketsan unveiled its first hypersonic missile, Tayfun Block-4, in July 2025. Tayfun Block-4 is said to be a hypersonic variant of the Tayfun missile, which is the longest-range ballistic missile manufactured in Turkey. Its manufacturer, Roketsan, claimed that this new version of Tayfun, weighing over 7 tonnes with its multi-purpose warhead, will be capable of destroying numerous strategic targets, such as air defense systems, command and control centers, military hangars, and critical military facilities, from kilometers away.
As per reports, the system’s mobile launch makes it more resilient in contested areas by enabling speedy deployment and relocation. Turkish defense specialists claim that Tayfun’s hypersonic speed, resistance to jamming, and difficulty for adversaries to intercept highlight Turkey’s ongoing emphasis on domestic defense technologies. Tayfun’s stated operational range is between 500 and 800 kilometers, with future iterations hoping to surpass 1,000 km, according to a study by Defence Industry Europe.
Other reports claim it’s hypersonic because of its continuous flight at sustained speeds exceeding Mach 5 (6125 km/h). Ukrainian media reported that in certain aspects, the Tayfun Block-4 hypersonic missile is superior to Russia’s Kinzhal.
Reported features of the missile:
The missile weighs around 7,200 kg, is 10 meters long, and has a diameter of 938 millimeters. With a reported accuracy of 5 to 10 meters CEP, this missile, powered by solid composite propellant and launched from a VOLAT mobile platform, has an inertial navigation system aided by GPS and GLONASS. According to claims made at IDEF 2025, its estimated speed is Mach 5. The warhead is a multi-purpose, pre-fragmented, high-explosive type designed to attack strategic land-based targets such as command posts, aircraft hangars, air defense systems, and vital infrastructure. According to reports, the missile can operate day or night, in any weather, and is impervious to electronic warfare. But this missile’s operational range, payload capacity, and any cutting-edge features like maneuverability or counter-defense evasion techniques haven’t yet been made public by Roketsan, leaving doubts about its various performance claims.
Test firings of Turkey’s missile systems:
In 2022, Iranian media sources reported that Roketsan company’s TRG-230-IHA, Turkey’s first hypersonic missile, successfully hit its target at a distance of 100 km. The corporation claimed that the missile was fired from a drone that was 7.62 km above the ground. In the same year, the Tayfun ballistic missile was first launched. The missile was claimed to have struck its target at a distance of 561 km in 458 seconds, indicating that the tests were successful. This launch happened from Turkey’s northeastern Rize-Artvin Airport. The moment the target was struck wasn’t captured in the released video. Tayfun is said to be the first Turkish short-range ballistic missile (SRBM).
In 2024, a hypersonic version of Tayfun was reportedly being developed and tested by Roketsan. In a video of a missile launching, Roketsan asserted that Tayfun’s great firing accuracy and ability to actively maneuver during flight made it challenging for the enemy to identify and destroy the missile. In February 2025, Roketsan tested the Tayfun ballistic missile. The missile was fired westward from Rize-Artvin Airport on the Black Sea coast. Analysis of the restricted zone shows that the distance between the firing location and the furthest point within the area was roughly 750 km, suggesting that the missile’s range in the test exceeded the 560 km range of the previous test, even though the precise range of the test firing wasn’t disclosed.
Again, in October 2025, the defense sector in Turkey successfully tested a ballistic missile, and a senior official highlighted improvements in strike accuracy and range. Roketsan claimed that during fleet acceptance firing, Tayfun proved its superior performance and strike capability by precisely hitting the target coordinates. The missile was claimed to exhibit remarkable precision for a ballistic system, with a circular error probability of 10 meters or less. The missile’s hypersonic cruising speeds and electronic warfare countermeasures were presented as ways to avoid air defense systems.
Debunking Turkey’s domestic hypersonic missile claims:
The first thing to clarify about this Tayfun missile is its origin. As per a Turkish source, the Tayfun program began in the 1990s with limited technology transfers from Western allies and defense cooperation with China, which means that it’s not a completely domestically built missile as Turkey claims. Although the Tayfun Block-4 missile is hyped as hypersonic, there is currently no documented proof that it possesses traits of a highly maneuverable hypersonic weapon. In the last stages of flight, ballistic missiles, particularly larger and longer-range ones, typically attain hypersonic speed, which is defined as speed greater than Mach 5. Further, its Go-On-Location-In-Space (GOLIS) guidance system is restricted to striking sedentary or stationary targets according to data that is loaded into the missile.
During its launch it was noted that its speed is five ‘sounds’ and the ‘accuracy’ is five meters while shooting at maximum range. This provided an excuse for Turkish media to assert that Turkey possessed hypersonic weapons. The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research also assessed that although this missile has been marketed as a ‘hypersonic weapon’ by media, its technical specifications and external structure design suggest that it’s more likely to be categorized as a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) with a maneuvering re-entry vehicle (MaRV) rather than a hypersonic missile like a hypersonic cruise missile (HCM) or hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV).
Even though analysts say that it is a hypersonic or quasi-ballistic ballistic missile that can make erratic changes during its terminal phase, which might enable it to evade air defenses like David’s Sling or Israel’s Iron Dome, they warn that these assertions haven’t yet been put to the test under actual operating circumstances. Iran, which possesses a similar missile like ‘Fattah’ with the help of China and North Korea, also questions the hypersonic claims of Tayfun, as although the missile may have demonstrated accuracy in military drills, it hasn’t yet encountered combat situations, and no strikes have been documented yet.
Understanding hypersonic technology:
It’s very clear now that the Turkish Tayfun Block-4 missile is a ballistic rocket system and not a ballistic missile because a ballistic missile has separate engine stages to attain higher ranges, and it isn’t clear whether it can be classified as an SRBM or MRBM. Hypersonic weapons, on the other hand, typically are of two types: the Hypersonic Cruise Missiles (HCM), which propel using a SCRAM-jet engine, and Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGV), which are first boosted to the upper atmosphere using a ballistic missile and then launched into the dense layers of the upper atmosphere, from where they glide using sonic boom waves to reach hypersonic speeds under the influence of gravitational forces while also maneuvering to reach their targets.
Any nation will first have to master the technology of an air-breathing RAM-jet engine to develop a supersonic missile first. Then only it can progress further to develop an SCRAM-jet engine, which is actually the core element of any hypersonic weapon (HCM). At present only a few nations have the capability to develop SCRAMjet engines, like Russia, the USA, China, and India. Turkey doesn’t have any capability to develop a ramjet engine, let alone scramjet engine technology. While an HGV doesn’t require a SCRAM-jet engine to propel, it needs advanced material research and heat-shield coating to withstand atmospheric friction and heat, and it typically is designed in the shape of a blended wing glider design, which only a few nations, like Russia, have mastered.
Prospects of the Tayfun missile and conclusion:
It’s now well understood that without a SCRAM-jet engine no nation can claim to develop hypersonic weapons. Hence, Tayfun’s comparison with Russia’s Kinzhal is illogical. Tayfun’s test firing doesn’t mention any range of targets, nor is any video of it hitting any targets available. Its CEP is still questionable, and whether it can follow any quasi-ballistic path is still unverified because a missile can only follow a quasi-ballistic trajectory if it has thrust vectoring nozzles and external fins, which are not present in Tayfun. Since its guidance is based on GOLIS, which uses predetermined data to help the missile maneuver, it’s best deduced that it will move only as per the data fed into its GOLIS systems and not follow any quasi-ballistic path, as that happens only with missiles that have warhead sensors that act in real time to avoid obstacles in their path and are not preloaded with flight data. Therefore, it’s best to conclude that Turkey’s Tayfun Block-4 is just a rocket launcher system with some legacy navigation systems onboard.