Old article but interesting!
EMERGENT PLAYER – TURKEY’S DRONE INDUSTRY
- Aviation Features
- Emergent player – Turkey’s drone industry
24th September 2021
FEATURE
Spurred on in the early 2000s by the growing international unmanned market, Turkey developed an indigenous drone industry and has become a significant UAV player
The history of Turkey’s rise as a verifiable developer and exporter of unmanned aerial systems can be charted back to attempts to acquire US and Israeli aircraft in the mid- to late-2000s – efforts that, for a number of reasons, purportedly did not meet Ankara’s hopes or intentions.
The Bayraktar platform, seen here in prototype form, has been widely distributed among Turkey’s armed forces. Baykar
Long considered the premier suppliers of military unmanned solutions, the US and Israel had snatched a considerable share of the global market for such systems, a situation that Turkey, as with many countries at the time, had no choice but to engage in.
In the mid-1990s, the country had sought out US manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) for the procurement of Gnat 750 and Gnat 1 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), designed for tactical level surveillance and support missions. These entered service in 1995 and were used over the next decade by the Turkish military. Having gained significant operational experience with the GA-ASI UAVs, Turkey returned to the company in the mid-2000s to undertake what became a multi-year campaign to procure MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper UAVs, which would offer a significant capability boost in terms of endurance and overall platform sophistication.
However, a combination of issues – notably a reluctance on the part of the American political administration at the time, under US President Barack Obama, to sell such systems to Turkey – resulted in the collapse of the earlier announced Foreign Military Sale.
The result of these endeavours – failures as far as Ankara was concerned – solidified the thoughts of the country’s ruling and industrial elite to ensure that Turkey would be able to provide for its own needs by developing a viable indigenous defence design, development and manufacturing capability. This ambition extended to all warfighting domains, to include unmanned systems capable of providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), as well as surface strike capabilities.
At the same time, Turkey had also successfully acquired a small number of Heron 1 UAVs from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), but widespread complaints by the country’s political class regarding platform failures and unsuitability – claims roundly denied by IAI – further soured the idea that foreign-sourced military equipment was a viable course of action.
During a Royal United Services Institute round table discussion on Ankara’s unmanned ambitions in May this year, Haluk Bayraktar, CEO of Turkish UAV original equipment manufacturer Baykar, which produces platforms such as the Bayraktar TB2 medium altitude, long endurance (MALE) system, suggested that after 2000 there “had been in a shift” in the direction the country was heading to meet its unmanned requirements.
“Twenty years ago, there were 20 companies [in Turkey’s military industrial base]. Now there are 2000,” Bayraktar said, adding there had been “an increase” in the number of military capabilities provided by indigenous sources.
Indigenous growth and exports
For Baykar, research efforts began on unmanned systems in 2000, achieving first flight and autopilot operations in 2004. This was followed in 2006 with the development of the Mini- and Malazgirt-class UAVs. First delivery of the Mini UAV to Turkey’s military was met in 2007, with the Malazgirt UAVs following in 2009. Baykar achieved the first export of Mini platforms in 2012.
Turkey has achieved some success in the export market, with Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Poland all acquiring the Bayraktar TB2. Baykar
These early steps laid the groundwork to make greater strides towards the development of larger, more capable systems, not just from Baykar but also the likes of Turkish Aerospace Industries with its Anka family, which resembles the platforms Ankara had sought from US-based suppliers a decade previously.
In 2012, Baykar followed the Mini and Malazgirt platforms with the development of a tactical class UAV, with the first delivery taking place in 2014. By 2017, the company had started work on the Akinci high altitude, long-endurance (also knows as HALE) platform, achieving the maiden flight in 2019.
The Akinci represents the current pinnacle of Baykar’s unmanned systems development, able to operate at altitudes of up to 40,000ft and with an endurance of 24 hours. The platform can carry a greater external payload compared to its predecessors – around 900kg – and will feature an active electronic scanning array radar and signals intelligence capability, including electronic and signals intelligence.
However, as earlier outlined, Turkey’s indigenous unmanned industry also set its sights on the global market, taking what it considers were failures in foreign procurement to offer platforms to countries that might otherwise not be able to acquire such capabilities due to financial or political reasons.
Although active in the market for more than a decade, Turkey’s announced sale of four Bayraktar TB2 mission sets to Poland, each comprising six UAVs, was a watershed moment. This was the first time that Turkey had managed to sell into a NATO country, with the deal including a logistics and training package, according to Mariusz Błaszczak, the Minister of National Defence. Błaszczak revealed that the contract covers the delivery of mobile ground control stations, SAR radars and training simulators, as well as the provision of Roketsan’s laser-guided MAM-L and MAM-C anti-tank missiles, enabling the provision of tactical surveillance, search and rescue and surface strike operations. The contract also provides for a 24-month warranty, as well as transfer of technology to ensure the capability for platform services and sustainment.
The Polish Ministry of National Defence stated that one Bayraktar TB2 mission set was valued at approximately $67m, suggesting an overall programme procurement cost of $402m. The first Bayraktar TB2 set of is scheduled to be delivered to the Polish Armed Forces by the end of 2022, with the entire order completed by the end of 2024.
Baykar’s Akinci UAV is the latest platform developed by the company, which has continued to evolve its unmanned technology over the past 20 years. Baykar
The Bayraktar TB2 is one of the most established MALE tactical UAVs produced by Turkish industry, capable of conducting ISR and combat missions using guided missiles carried on four suspension points under the wings. In addition, the platform is capable of fully autonomous taxiing, take-off, landing and flight, reducing operator workload to aid mission efficiency. The system has a flight endurance of up to 27 hours, a maximum take-off weight of 700kg and a maximum speed of around 220km/h. Additionally, the platform has an operational ceiling of 27,000ft and a beyond-line-of-sight range of 1,800km.
Baykar has also achieved export successes in the Middle East, following the March 2018 order by Qatar for six Bayraktar TB2 UAVs, which was the first export order of the type. The deal, signed with Qatar’s Reconnaissance and Surveillance Centre (RSC), included three ground control stations, training and associated equipment, including a UAV operations centre. Qatar had earlier bought smaller unmanned platforms from the Turkish company, acquiring ten Bayraktar Mini UAVs in 2012 under a $3.95m contract, becoming the first UAVs in the Qatar Armed Forces inventory.
Other international operators of the Bayraktar TB2 include Azerbaijan and Ukraine, although details are less clear as to platform numbers for these two customers.
What is clear is the place that unmanned systems now have on the modern battlefield, following Azerbaijan’s experience in conducting operations against Armenian military forces during the Nagorno-Karabakh war of 2020, in which unmanned systems played a decisive role in the conflict. Turkey has also put platform theory into practice in Operations Euphrates Shield (2016), Olive Branch (2018) and Spring Shield (2020) in Syria.
Speaking during RUSI’s May briefing, Can Kasapoglu, director of security and defence research programme at Istanbul-based think tank EDAM, outlined the evolving role of combat and surveillance UAVs on the modern battlefield: “In each operation... we observed trends. First, integration of land-based fire support, where the drones are force multipliers. Second, drones used in the suppression of enemy defences. Third, pinpoint target. And fourth, drone footage [is] used in information operations in the digital sphere of modern conflict.”
Defence diplomacy
Another factor in the export of UAV systems into the international market is the political benefit that comes with it – the element of defence diplomacy that, in some form or other, influences virtually all elements of geopolitics today.
Ukraine had previously acquired the Bayraktar TB2 for its military, one of the earlier steps into the European continent. Ukrainian MOD
Taking the Polish Bayraktar TB2 acquisition as an example, Poland’s political class was keen to highlight the deal as not only improving the military capabilities of the country’s armed forces, but also the defence and political co-operative benefits that would follow.
“Yesterday, the presidents of Poland and Turkey talked about security on NATO’s eastern flank, including the security of Poland and Turkey. They also discussed our military co-operation. This is the framework that we, the defence ministers, fill,” stated Błaszczak on May 25, following his meeting with Hulusi Akar, Turkey’s Minister of National Defense.
A statement from Poland Ministry of National Defence pointed to discussions between the two ministers such as military co-operation, both bilateral and within the framework of NATO (both countries being NATO members), while also raising “matters related to further strengthening the security of NATO’s southern flank region.”
These were particularly pointed comments given the perhaps divergent ambitions that other Alliance members such as Greece and Italy have in the Mediterranean region.
“I am very glad that... I had the honour to sign the contract for the purchase of unmanned aerial vehicles. It is a very good weapon, a proven weapon that significantly increases the capabilities of the Polish Army,” Błaszczak stated. “We have also discussed other possible areas of co-operation, including artillery and various fields of modernisation of the Polish Army.”
Also signed was an agreement between Poland and Turkey concerning the mutual protection of classified defence industry information. Interestingly, the 2021 announcement had been preceded in 2017 by the signing of a Declaration of Intent between Poland and Turkey, which set out areas of future defence co-operation.
Speaking during May’s RUSI round table, Ash Rossiter, the assistant professor of international security at Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates, said the export of Turkish unmanned systems “may be part” of Turkey’s efforts in building relationships with other states. However, those efforts have not been universally welcomed.
“[There has been] a belief, an acceptance and no small amount of resignation that Turkey has developed drones [and] that has been met with some resignation in the [Middle East] region amongst Turkey’s rivals,” Rossiter explained. ”There is a misunderstanding of how Turkey got to where it got to, and some surprise in Turkey’s rise as a drone power.”
Nevertheless, the facts are on the ground – or, indeed, in the skies. Over the course of a generation, Ankara has created a viable unmanned industry and provided systems of evolving sophistication to its armed forces, while entering into the Great Game of defence geopolitics. Turkey’s efforts to carve a sizeable chunk of the UAV market has been successful and is likely to grow.
By Richard Thomas
Originally published in AIR International Website
