Indonesia will be the third country in Southeast Asia to operate a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) system.
From experiences from the war in Ukraine, future conflicts will be mixed and will tend to be a high-tech war from the beginning of the battle. And the air weapon will be the pre-emptive strike. According to Turkish news agency Anadolu on November 4, major Turkish defense manufacturer Roketsan announced the first export agreement for the Khan tactical ballistic missile system to Indonesia. This would make Indonesia the third country in Southeast Asia to operate a short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) system. Other SRBM users in Southeast Asia are Vietnam (Scud) and Philippines (Brahmos).
Khan is an export variant of Turkey’s Bora tactical ballistic missile system, and Indonesia is also the first foreign country to operate the system. Bora was first publicly revealed in 2017 and first commissioned in 2019 when at least one missile was launched from Turkish territory at targets in Iraq. The system is mounted on an 8 X 8 truck chassis with a multi-barrel launcher.
Although of Turkish origin, the main ingredients of Khan are developed abroad or come from other countries. The missile was developed in China and the highly maneuverable wheeled chassis comes from Belarus. Khan is essentially a Turkish-licensed version of the Chinese M20 system.
The missile It has 610 mm diameter, a length of 8.0 m, a total weight of 2,500 kg with a minimum range of 80 km and maximum range of 280 km, which carries a 470-kg high-explosive or fragmentation warhead. It has an accuracy of 10m Circular error probable provided by its GPS and GLONAS aided inertial guidance. It is highly mobile better assuring its ability to remain undetected.
Khan was developed as a weapon to attack troop concentration areas and armored vehicles, as well as other important targets such as airfields, command posts, anti-aircraft batteries and support facilities. Basically this ballistic missile can be used as an alternative to precision bombing. The missile can be re-targeted during flight. This capability allows to engage moving targets.
The missiles are packaged in containers, which reduces maintenance for years and helps protect the missile from direct attack, the environment, or NBC threats. According to the assessment, the Turkish Khan is equivalent to the Russian Iskander-E system in terms of performance and capability.
The weapon system is mounted on a new Belarusian 8×8 MZKT-7909 wheeled chassis. It is equipped with a 525 hp TMZ-84631 turbocharged diesel engine, combined with an automatic transmission. The vehicle can move on any terrain to increase the ability to quickly deploy. The vehicle is lightly armored to protect the crew from small arms fire and shrapnel. The maximum road speed reaches 70 km/h, and the maximum range is up to 1,000 km.
