Turkey goes all in on drones
Ankara is rushing to manufacture unmanned aerial vehicles for economic, political and military reasons, but Turkey needs to develop a drone doctrine and consider the ethical ramifications before their use proliferates.
On Dec. 17, Turkey’s locally made tactical unmanned aerial vehicle Bayraktar TB2 fired an air-to-ground missile on its test flight. It was the first armed UAV flight and test firing in Turkey.
The Bayraktar TB2, with a 40-foot wingspan and 1,400-pound takeoff weight, has a 93-mile (150-kilometer) range. In its firing test from an altitude of 16,000 feet, it scored a perfect hit on a 2-square-yard target from a distance of 5 miles. It used a long-range, laser-guided anti-tank UMTAS missile produced by the state-owned weapons manufacturer Roketsan. Roketsan modified the missile, which operates on "fire-and-forget" mode, for TB2 use.
