OMTAS
Turkish-made portable fire-and-forget anti-tank missile
The OMTAS (Orta Menzilli Tanksavar Sistemi), also known as Mızrak-O, is a Turkish medium range anti-tank guided missile developed by Roketsan. It is one of the Turkish-made ATGMs, along with the short-range Karaok, long-range UMTAS and gun-launched TANOK.
OMTAS is an advanced system with various types of latest technologies, effective against modern armored threats on the battlefield.
01Design
OMTAS weapon system is a combination of missile, missile launching platform with fire control unit, carrying cases, and training simulator. It intended to destroy stationary and moving armored targets. Firing can occur from a tripod mount, vehicle, stabilized land platform, or remote controlled turret. The missile has two types of selectable warhead to use, tandem-charge high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) and high explosive (HE) fragmentation. The tandem HEAT warhead is designed to counter the armor of modern main battle tanks and HE fragmentation warhead to attack infantry positions and light or non-armored vehicles. The system can use a thermographic camera sight.
OMTAS features day and night all-weather abilities, direct attack and top attack modes, switching targets during flight, fire-behind-mask, fire-and-forget, and fire-and-update modes. The impact point on a target can be updated during flight. OMTAS's uncooled imaging infrared (IIR) seeker is supplied by another Turkish defense company Aselsan. Actual armor penetration of the tandem-charge HEAT warhead is still classified but it can be assumed that it is not less than 1000 mm behind explosive reactive armor (ERA) and could be more deadly with its wider 160 mm diameter.
02Replacement
OMTAS is likely to replace current 152 mm BGM-71 TOW and 103 mm MILAN in Turkish service. As of 2021, OMTAS is the largest top attack missile developed by a NATO member state.
03Operators
04L-OMTAS
The L-OMTAS is a laser-guided variant of the OMTAS medium-range anti-tank guided missile developed by Roketsan. Unlike the baseline OMTAS, which uses an imaging infrared (IIR) seeker, the L-OMTAS employs semi-active laser guidance. This provides an alternative guidance option for engagements where external target designation is available. The missile can be launched from ground-based tripod launchers as well as integrated onto land platforms. It has a reported maximum range of 5.5 km and entered serial production in 2026 for service with the Turkish Armed Forces.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “OMTAS”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- RoketsanIDEF2015 (9).JPG by CeeGee, CC BY-SA 4.0
Fathomly is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Spotted a problem? Tell us.
