This is the first public photo of the frigate TCG Salihreis with her brand new 3D Smart-S Mk2 radar. The last batch of 4 MEKO 200 frigates were delivered to Turkish Navy with AWS-9 3D radars of British origin. A modernization program for the MEKO 200 class was started after Turkish decided to use Smart-S Mk2 radar in the first two ships of the Milgem class.TCG Salihreis is the 4 ship in Turkish inventory to have this new radar. The other ships are F-511 TCG Heybeliada, F-512 TCG Büyükada and F-497 TCG Göksu.
The difficult and sometimes dangerous maintenance and the structural complexity of the AWS-9 radars does not make these equipment very popular among its users. So I expect that once the tests of this new radar are completed there will be other replacements too.