UAVs and SİHAs produced in Turkey attract attention from all over the world. Both state-affiliated institutions such as TAI and private companies such as Baykar and Lentatek (Vestel) have started to raise the level of technology in this field to the top league. As such, other countries began to line up to buy. Even Russia said that it wants to buy Bayraktar TB2 and produce it jointly. Well, does Baykar take kindly to this situation?
Russia wants Bayraktar TB2! The response from Baykar did not delay!
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been following Turkish UAVs and SİHAs closely for a long time. Even before Ukraine, he took a close look at the Azerbaijan-Armenia war and the operations against terrorism in Syria.
If we include the Libyan civil war, Bayraktar TB2 SİHAs proved themselves against Russian air defense systems on 4 different fronts. In fact, we can even say that as a result of tactical elections, it has gained the upper hand many times.
Record after record from Bayraktar TB2! Birds that don’t land
Of course, Russia did not take it as seriously as the USA, since this confrontation was always experienced through 3rd party forces. But a few days after he said he would not attack Ukraine, he realized that they had overlooked a remarkable element the day he launched the occupation forces under the name of the operation.
First of all, let us state that the attack capacity of Bayraktar TB2s actually allows strategic operations. In other words, it cannot carry ammunition with high explosive charges. Or there is no effective attack method against enemy air elements.
But in critical operations, it can show itself as a flock of birds on the radar of the enemy and watch its every step. It can also use ammunition that is explosive and sensitive enough to take out an armored vehicle when necessary.
For this reason, Ukraine uses Bayraktar TB2s specifically to monitor the rear of the Russian troops and to knock them out of their supply lines. Of course, as we mentioned, we also saw that in some situations, when the ground forces were not enough and the enemy did not want to risk their limited number of jets in the face of air defense systems, they were also used to eliminate tanks and artillery.
Russia, on the other hand, does not have a similar system. Maybe it will not be so difficult to develop this aircraft for high-tech countries. However, it is among Putin’s wishes to produce these systems, which have reached 500 thousand hours of flight time and proved themselves on 4 fronts, together with Turkey.
However, Baykar General Manager Haluk Bayraktar stated that they do not take kindly to this situation and that there is no question of SİHA sales or technology transfer production with the following words:
Money and material resources have never been the goal in our business. Our friendship and cooperation with Ukraine has been going on for many years. Therefore, no matter how much money they offer us, to be honest it is out of the question to give Moscow a drone.
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