On February 24, 2025, the Turkish company FNSS Savunma Sistemleri (a joint venture of the Turkish Nurol holding and BAE Systems Corporation) announced the conclusion of a contract with the Turkish Defense Industry Department (Savunma Sanayii Başkanlığı - SSB) for the supply of the first 25 FNSS PARS ALPHA wheeled armored personnel carriers in 8x8 and 6x6 versions in six different specialized versions to the Turkish ground forces.
Prototype of the FNSS PARS ALPHA wheeled armored personnel carrier in the 8x8 (c) FNSS version
It is reported that in this way several PARS ALPHA 8x8 vehicles will be purchased in variants of a self-propelled anti-tank missile system and an armored recovery vehicle, as well as PARS ALPHA 6x6 in four specialized variants, of which it is known about the variant of the command and staff vehicle. At the same time, linear armored personnel carriers are not yet included in the purchase.
In total, the Turkish Ground Forces plan to purchase more than 2,000 8x8 and 6x6 wheeled armored vehicles as part of the Yeni Nesil Araçlar Projesi new generation armored vehicles purchase program. Apparently, the signed contract means the final choice of FNSS proposals by the SSB and the Turkish army in this long-term project for Turkey's selection of 8x8 and 6x6 armored personnel carriers and vehicles based on them, which has been going on for about 25 years. At the same time, the fierce competition between Turkish manufacturers of wheeled armored vehicles and the highly politicized nature of this process (due to the connection of various companies with various oligarchic and political groups in Turkey), as well as the obvious desire of SSB to support the widest possible range of domestic manufacturers, leave an open question. is the choice in favor of FNSS PARS ALPHA final? These doubts are confirmed by the fact that, as it turns out, the final choice in favor of the type of linear armored personnel carrier has not yet been made. It is no coincidence that, almost simultaneously, at the end of February 2025, reports appeared about the conclusion of an SSB contract for the supply of an experimental batch of 29 Altuğ 8×8 linear armored personnel carriers manufactured by another Turkish Navy company to the Turkish ground forces.
The PARS family of armored vehicles has been developed by FNSS since the early 2000s, initially based on a family of vehicles with wheel formulas from 4x4 to 10x10 by a small American company GPV (General Purpose Vehicles), introduced in the 1990s, but which did not find market demand, and acquired by a Turkish manufacturer. FNSS has gone through several iterations of designs for various versions of these machines over the past 20 years, increasingly moving away from the original GPV designs, and the current 8x8 and 6x6 PARS ALPHA family already has little in common with them, except for the chassis design elements.
The PARS ALPHA FNSS machines belong to the fifth generation of the PARS family (PARS V) and were first introduced in 2020, after which they underwent an extensive four-year testing program under the auspices of SSB. In the PARS ALPHA 8x8 version, the car has a full combat weight of up to 35 tons and is equipped with a 711 hp diesel engine (easy to guess Caterpillar C13) and an automatic transmission (apparently Allison). The suspension is independent, double-lever, hydropneumatic, with variable ground clearance. The capacity of the PARS ALPHA 8x8 vehicle in the performance of a linear APC is 12 people, including three crew members. The crew is stationed behind the engine. The vehicle can be equipped with various combat modules, but in the linear version it is normally offered with an uninhabited combat module developed by FNSS-a TEBER II 30/40 turret with a 30 mm or 40 mm automatic cannon.
The PARS ALPHA 8x8 variant, now ordered by the Turkish army, is a self-propelled ATGM (literally an anti-tank platoon [motorized infantry company] vehicle) equipped with a remotely controlled combat module with a 12.7 mm machine gun and two launchers of the Turkish "infantry" ATGM Roketsan Karaok, which is a kind of analog of the Javelin ATGM (with the same range up to 2500 m).
FNSS has already secured several contracts for the supply of the PARS family of vehicles to the Turkish army. According to a number of contracts issued starting in 2016, by the end of 2024, the Turkish army had supplied more than 300 PARS 4x4 ATV self-propelled anti-tank systems, made on the chassis of the latest version of the PARS 4x4 armored vehicle, which no longer has anything in common with GPV vehicles, and equipped with Kornet-E or Roketsan Mizrak-O ATGM launchers (OMTAS). In April 2019, SSB awarded FNSS a contract to supply the Turkish army and gendarmerie with 100 PARS IZCI armored reconnaissance vehicles in 8x8 and 6x6 wheelbase versions based on the PARS III armored personnel carrier modification, which maintained the continuity of GPV vehicles. In the future, it is possible to purchase up to 400 reconnaissance vehicles in total for the Turkish army and gendarmerie. Finally, at the end of 2022, the Turkish Special Operations Command received 12 armored personnel carriers of the 6x6 version of the PARS IV.
FNSS achieved its first success in the foreign market with the supply of the PARS family of armored personnel carriers in Malaysia, concluding in 2010 a contract worth about $ 2.4 billion for the supply and licensed production of 257 vehicles of the first version of the PARS 8x8 under the designation AV8 Gempita. Deliveries of vehicles in 12 versions of the Malaysian army were made from 2014 to 2020. Subsequently, FNSS sold 172 8x8 and 6x6 PARS III APCs to Oman ( delivered in 2017-2020) and 67 8x8 and 6x6 PARS III APCs to the pro-Turkish forces in Libya (delivered in 2019-2020), and now has a contract (actually funded by the Turkish government) for the supply of 24 6x6 PARS III APCs. the Kosovo security forces. FNSS continues to export the marketing of armored personnel carriers of the PARS III, PARS IV and PARS ALPHA variants, and at the end of 2023 presented a prototype of a new modification of the PARS X.
Specialized variants of armored vehicles based on the FNSS PARS ALPHA wheeled armored personnel carrier ordered for the Turkish Ground Forces. From top to bottom: 8x8 self-propelled anti-tank missile system, 8x8 armored recovery vehicle, 6x6 (c) FNSS command and staff vehicle
Images of the FNSS PARS ALPHA wheeled armored personnel carrier in the 8x8 version in a linear version with various FNSS combat modules (c)
