Türkiye Offers LHD-230 Drone Carrier for Export with Amphibious Assault and UAV Operations.

A new large-deck amphibious assault ship design signals Türkiye’s push to project power from the sea with greater reach and flexibility. The LHD-230 is built to deliver troops, aircraft, and command capabilities in a single platform, strengthening rapid deployment and crisis response operations.

The ship combines helicopter and drone aviation with amphibious lift and onboard command systems, enabling coordinated operations across air, land, and sea. Its design reflects a shift toward multipurpose sea-basing that supports distributed operations, sustained presence, and modern expeditionary warfare.

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TAIS Shipyards and SEDEF’s LHD-230, showcased at DSA in Kuala Lumpur, highlights Türkiye’s TCG Anadolu concept as a 230.8-meter amphibious assault ship combining helicopter and UAV operations, troop lift, and command capabilities in a single expeditionary platform (Picture source: Army Recognition Group).

TAIS lists the ship at about 27,000 tonnes, with a top speed of roughly 20 knots, a 9,000-nautical-mile range, and 50 days of endurance. In Turkish service, that concept became reality when TCG Anadolu entered commission in April 2023 after a program built at SEDEF with Navantia engineering support under a contract signed in 2015.

The platform’s technical architecture explains why it matters. Sedef describes a 5,440 m² flight deck with six landing spots and a ski-jump ramp, a 900 m² hangar, a 1,165 m² floodable well dock, and large vehicle spaces for armored and light forces; the display seen at the exhibition also showed generous heavy and light vehicle decks tailored for mechanized landing forces. That layout gives the ship genuine over-the-horizon assault utility rather than simple transport value.

TAIS also positions the LHD-230 as a heavily networked combat platform, not just a transport hull. The published baseline fit includes two 11 MW Siemens eSIPOD propulsion units, five 8 MW diesel gensets, five 25 mm ASELSAN STOP remotely operated naval guns, two Phalanx CIWS, a fitted-for RAM position, ADVENT combat management, 3D search radar, precision approach radar, IRST, electronic warfare systems, diver detection sonar, torpedo countermeasures, and SATCOM.

The development path is equally significant. Anadolu descends from Navantia’s Juan Carlos I design, but the Turkish program became a technology-transfer and naval-integration effort in its own right, moving from steel cutting in 2016 to keel laying in 2018, launch in 2019, delivery in January 2023, and commissioning on 10 April 2023. In practice, the ship gave Türkiye a strategic amphibious flagship while deepening domestic experience in large-deck warship construction and combat-system integration.

The most important evolution came in the air wing. After Türkiye lost the F-35B option, Ankara reoriented the ship toward unmanned aviation. Baykar’s TB3 validated that concept by becoming the first UAV to take off from and land on a short-runway vessel in November 2024, passing 100 shipboard sorties by June 2025, conducting live-fire events during SEAWOLF 2025, and flying again from Anadolu during NATO’s Steadfast Dart 2026. That changes the ship from a helicopter assault platform into a sea-based ISR and strike node.

Operationally, a country could use an LHD-230 in several ways. It can launch landing craft and amphibious vehicles from the well dock, insert troops by helicopter beyond defended beaches, maintain UAVs overhead for reconnaissance and target acquisition, and coordinate joint operations as an afloat headquarters. The same hull can also conduct non-combatant evacuation, disaster relief, hospital support, and expeditionary resupply when ports or airfields are damaged, contested, or politically inaccessible.

Today, Türkiye is the only confirmed operator of the Anadolu variant. The broader design family, however, is already proven: Navantia’s Juan Carlos I serves Spain, and the closely related Canberra class serves Australia. This is where Bayraktar TB3 shipboard trials and Turkish naval modernization intersect with a credible exportable amphibious warfare package.

Against France’s Mistral, the Turkish offer adds a ski-jump deck and clearer growth space for fixed-wing UAV or STOVL-style concepts, while the French ship is optimized around helicopter assault, command duties, and humanitarian response. Against Italy’s 245-meter Trieste, the LHD-230 is smaller and less aviation-intensive, but also closer to the Juan Carlos I/Canberra size class that many medium navies may judge the better balance of lift, reach, and complexity. It also fits within wider regional amphibious warfare programs.

Strategically, the LHD-230 is attractive because it lets a navy buy options rather than a single mission. A ship of this type can show presence, land force, host helicopters or drones, command a task group, and deliver relief supplies without the burden of a full aircraft carrier. That is why the TAIS/SEDEF model seen in Kuala Lumpur merits close attention: it shows how Türkiye is turning a proven amphibious hull into a flexible expeditionary tool for unmanned and joint-force warfare.