Turkish company Baykar, which supplies Bayraktar UAVs to Ukraine, currently has a production capacity of 20 UAVs per month and backlogs for the next three years. Citing the manufacturer, Bloomberg reported it.
“We are mass-producing TB2 and Akıncı unmanned aerial vehicles, there is a demand for both,” said the company’s president, Haluk Bayraktar, in an interview with the Ukraine Go Back Alive Foundation. We have export agreements with 22 different countries for Bayraktar TB2.” He runs the company together with his brother, Selçuk Bayraktar, who is the husband of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s youngest daughter. The second of the brothers is the technical director at the company.
The company, which is also working on the unmanned fighter aircraft project called Bayraktar Kızılelma, wants to increase its production capacity. It hopes to achieve this thanks to a factory in Ukraine, where it plans to assemble the TB2 and Akıncı drones, as well as the Kızılelma fighters.
Ukraine also promised more Bayraktar drones
“Unbelievable, Turkey has agreed to deliver Bayraktar, which Lithuania collected for free,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anušauskas said on Twitter a while ago.
According to Haluk Bayraktar, a research facility and a modern facility are under construction in Ukraine. “We see Ukraine as a strategic partner. We want to make Ukraine a production base,” he said. Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey said in a recent interview with RBC newspaper that production in Ukraine could start at the end of 2023.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in June that Kiev has received 50 TB2 drones since the Russian invasion.
Turkey did not announce official military aid to Ukraine, which is resisting the Russian occupation. But earlier, Baykar company promised to donate several drones to Ukraine. The AFP agency wrote that such a gesture would most likely not be made without the approval of the Turkish president.
Turkey, a NATO member, is trying to act as a neutral mediator between Ukraine and Russia, and last month it helped broker a deal for grain exports from congested Ukrainian ports. At the beginning of August, Erdogan traveled to Russia, where he discussed economic cooperation with his counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and agreed with him that Turkey would partially pay for Russian gas in rubles.
Source: Seznam Zpravy