Koç Savunma: The Turkish Sonar House Selling Harbour Defence, Not Headlines
Underwater acoustics is the least glamorous corner of the defence market and one of the hardest to enter. A sonar is not a box of components; it is decades of accumulated propagation modelling, signal processing and, above all, classification data — the ability to tell a diver from a dolphin, a mooring chain from a delivery vehicle, without alarming the watch officer forty times a night.
That barrier is why Koç Bilgi ve Savunma Teknolojileri A.Ş. — Koç Savunma — is worth a closer look than its size suggests.
A narrow company by design
The Ankara-based firm works across four declared domains: underwater acoustic systems, naval electronic systems, military communications and simulation. Its engineering description covers underwater systems design, acoustic signal processing, underwater environment modelling, acoustic detection, diagnosis and classification, electronic system design, embedded software, data fusion, mechanical product design and modelling and simulation. It is listed in both the SAHA Istanbul and OSTIM Defence and Aerospace Cluster registers, and states that it has been operating for more than a decade.
Its declared customer base is the Turkish Ministry of National Defence, the Turkish Armed Forces, prime contractors and allied defence organisations.
ECHORIUM: the diver problem
The company’s principal export-facing product is the ECHORIUM diver detection sonar family, developed to protect naval bases, ports and critical maritime infrastructure. Per the company’s material, the system detects divers, autonomous underwater vehicles and other underwater threats at ranges of up to one kilometre, supports temporary, permanent and portable installation, and performs automatic detection, tracking and classification with a low false-alarm rate.
The specification that matters in this class is not range. It is false-alarm rate. A harbour sonar that cries wolf is switched off within a month, and every operator who has fielded one knows it.
The three-configuration approach is commercially astute. Permanent installations suit home naval bases; portable variants suit expeditionary deployments and visiting-force protection; temporary installations suit summits, port calls and offshore energy infrastructure with a defined risk window. That last category is expanding rapidly. Since the Baltic Sea incidents, European operators of subsea cables, pipelines and offshore wind have been budgeting for underwater surveillance they had never previously priced.
MALAMAN and the return of the sea mine
Alongside ECHORIUM, Koç Savunma markets MALAMAN, described as a smart sea mine. Both systems were shown at DSA 2026 in Kuala Lumpur in April 2026, according to Defensehere’s exhibition reporting — a venue that says something about where the company sees demand: Southeast Asian littorals, archipelagic states and contested shallow water.
The naval mine is quietly back in fashion. It is the cheapest sea-denial instrument available, it is politically deniable in a way missiles are not, and NATO’s mine countermeasures capacity was allowed to atrophy for two decades. A modern “smart” mine — target-discriminating, remotely armable, safe to recover — is a different proposition from the moored contact mines of the 1980s, and Western industry has surprisingly few current offerings in the class.
The localisation figure
Koç Savunma states that it has passed 75 per cent domestic content in its underwater acoustic and naval electronics systems, and that these products contain no subsystems, components or materials requiring export licences from third countries.
The second half of that statement is the commercially decisive one. Export-licence-free content means the supplier can quote a delivery schedule that no third government can interrupt. For buyers in Southeast Asia, the Gulf and Africa who have watched contracts stall over end-user certification, that is often worth more than a specification advantage. Envanter Medya notes that the 75 per cent figure is a company statement and has not been independently audited.
What is not established
No verified open-source data was found for Koç Savunma’s headcount, revenue, delivered ECHORIUM unit numbers or export customers. No naval user of MALAMAN has been publicly identified. The detection performance figures cited above are manufacturer specifications and have not been independently tested by this publication.
Frequently asked questions
What is a diver detection sonar?
An active sonar system installed at a port, naval base or offshore facility to detect, track and classify swimmers, combat divers and small autonomous underwater vehicles approaching the protected area.
What is ECHORIUM’s stated detection range?
Up to one kilometre against divers, autonomous underwater vehicles and comparable underwater threats, according to the manufacturer.
Where were ECHORIUM and MALAMAN shown publicly?
At DSA 2026 in Kuala Lumpur in April 2026, where Koç Savunma presented both systems.
Sources: Defensehere, DSA 2026 exhibition coverage (Kuala Lumpur, April 2026); Koç Bilgi ve Savunma Teknolojileri A.Ş. entries in the SAHA Istanbul and OSTIM Defence & Aerospace Cluster registers; company technical material; Envanter Medya company file.
