Turkey banks on military drones to extend power, regional clout
The “dronization” of Turkey’s power projection abroad continues with a new unmanned aerial vehicle that Ankara plans to use against PKK militants in Iraq and Syria as well as in brewing regional conflicts.
Turkey is gearing up to start production of a new high-altitude, long-endurance drone, hoping to extend its military reach in the region and compensate, even if fractionally, for the loss of the F-35 new-generation jets after a row with Washington.
Baykar Makina — a company owned by the family of Selcuk Bayraktar, the young son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — announced Aug. 14 that the second prototype of the high-altitude, long-endurance variant of the Akinci drone, whose name means “raider” in Turkish, had successfully completed test flights and was ready for production.
A service ceiling of 40,000 feet and 24 hours of endurance will make the new drone immune to close-range air defense systems and provide it with an operational radius of 600 kilometers (373 miles). It will have a maximum takeoff weight of 4.5 tons and a payload capacity of 1,350 kilograms — 900 kilograms external and 450 kilograms internal — and be powered by two Ukrainian Ivchenko-Progress AI-450C turboprop engines, each generating 550 horsepower. Turkey has so far imported 12 such engines from Ukraine, its main partner in the field of drone technology.
Some may ask what’s the big deal about a drone that, at the end of the day, is rather cumbersome, with a speed of no more than 400 kilometers (some 250 miles) per hour. But Ankara has high expectations for what the drone could deliver.
